The introduction of powerful web publishing tools like WordPress has effectively improved web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This is terrific news for non-technical users planning to start a website that they can fully manage themselves.
Before “blogging” and the introduction of sophisticated CMS applications, if you needed to build a professional website built for your business, you would have to wait until both the website development and website design processes were fully completed. This process could mean weeks, sometimes even months of waiting!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this post, we explain what themes are, how they help you save money on web design costs, and how WP themes make it easy to customize your website.
A Revolution In Web Design
More businesses have benefited from a revolution in website design that has been going for several years now. If you own a business, you will want to know about this, because it can save your business a lot of time and money on web development and web design costs.
Very briefly, here’s what used to happen before a CMS tool like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your requirements with a website development firm or designer. After this, the ”look and feel” of the site itself would be decided upon. This meant time being spent with a professional web designer discussing design elements of your web site such as the, colors, styles, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be individually created with all your elements and codes written into the page content. The pages were then assembled into a website using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file required to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and was working how it should (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the site deemed to be finished and ready for sign off.
Then, website “templates” came along”. A web site template allows presentation elements of the website to be created separately from the page content. Having template elements helped speed up the web site development process and resulted in lowered production costs. This also allowed web site developers to service smaller business clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses began adopting “template-based” web design services, web templates were designed that could provide clients with various customization features and options, such as the ability to switch colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and web editor applications evolved, website templates also began transforming into website template ”systems”, allowing website owners to control the visual aspects of a website.
And then, WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new website revolution …
(WordPress – A Content Publishing Revolution)
To learn more about content management systems and the benefits of the WordPress CMS, see the tutorial below:
The WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme takes the idea of a website template system much further.
A WP theme controls and unifies the design elements of a web site. It allows you to add a “skin” over your entire site much like a website template system does but it also also provides users with more control over the management, appearance and customization aspects of the template settings.
As stated in the official WordPress site …
A WordPress Theme is a collection of files that work together to produce a graphical interface with an underlying unifying design for a weblog. These files are called template files. A Theme modifies the way the site is displayed, without modifying the underlying software. Themes may include customized template files, image files (*.jpg, *.gif), style sheets (*.css), custom Pages, as well as any necessary code files (*.php).
(source: WordPress.org)
As stated in the quote above, one of the unique features of the WP theme is that the way your site displays to visitors is controlled separately from how your website works internally to handle areas like content management and functionality.
Basically, what this means is that WP themes let you modify the design of your site as often as you want without modifying your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have configured your site for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be done. You can get your website built simply and get started with any theme you like, and change the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in a few seconds, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WP site with no website code development skills required. Just choose a WordPress theme you want, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your web design and customize elements like headers, page layout, typography and more with just a couple of mouse clicks …
Since WordPress is made available as open source software, website designers all around the world can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that loads of great WP themes can be downloaded by WP users. WordPress are usually distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to access thousands of excellent website templates at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Free Theme Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their content online, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
Themes range from functional-looking, to designs that are simply breathtaking and could typically cost many hundreds of dollars to create. Surprisingly, WP themes can be bought fairly cheaply, especially when compared to what it would have cost you if a website designer had to build it from scratch.
You can see a number of WordPress theme galleries that include stunning examples of great premium WordPress themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of WP Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits of choosing WordPress themes over using applications that require traditional web template design:
Be Up And Running In Very Little Time
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress themes repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing online community of commercial theme developers who, collectively, contribute thousands of fantastic WP Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent look across all the blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This makes it possible to replace themes as often as you like without changing your site’s underlying data.
- Many themes provide additional functionality and settings that enable you to easily customize the theme’s style and design properties and create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that allows users to update themes to a newer theme version without losing its unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically right within the dashboard.
- Themes helps you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally quite affordable.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many theme developers are now developing themes that incorporate “responsive” functionality.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically resize to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. PCs, iPads, cell phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can navigate, read and load your site on most device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional themes.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website will work correctly across all of your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards of website design.
I hope this overview has given you a better understanding about WordPress themes, what WP themes are, how themes help you save money on web design costs, and how themes make it easy to customize a site.
In our next blog post in the article series for non-technical users on basic WordPress features, we show you where to search for great themes for your website.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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