Powerful content management tools like WordPress have truly simplified web design and web development for web users.
This is a great thing for business owners that want to own a website that is simple and easy to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of powerful and effective CMS solutions, if you needed to build a professional website for your business, you normally had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This could take many weeks, sometimes even months!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this post, we look at what themes are, how they save your business money on web design costs, and how themes make it easy to customize your website.
Web Design Revolution
Businesses, especially small businesses, are benefiting from an evolution in website design that started several years ago. If you are a small business owner, you may want to learn more about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
Let’s briefly go over how things used to work in “traditional” website development before systems like WordPress came along:
First, you would discuss your project with a website development firm or web designer. Then, the design would be decided upon. This meant spending time and money with someone with web site design skills going over areas of your website such as the layout, colours, formats, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be individually created with all of your elements and scripts coded around the page content. All the pages were then assembled together into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file required to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and functioned how it should (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the site deemed as being completed and ready for delivery.
Then, web design “templates” were introduced”. Website templates allow the ”look and feel” of the website to be created separately from content on the page. The introduction of template elements helped to make the process of site creation faster and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed website developers to service businesses with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses adopting “template-based” web design services increased, web templates started being developed that could provide clients with a number of custom settings, like the option to switch colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and website editing software evolved, web templates also began evolving into web templating “systems” that allowed website owners and web developers to customize their website’s visual aspects.
And then, WordPress came along and helped to start a new business 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:
About WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme drives website template systems even further.
The WP theme system controls and unifies the design areas of the web site. It allows you to add a “skin” over your entire site similarly to what a template system does but it also also gives you more control over the management, presentation and customization aspects of all template settings.
As the official WordPress site states …
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 the above quote states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of the WordPress theme is that the way your site appears to visitors in no way affects your site’s functional aspects (e.g. content management and functionality).
In simple terms, what this means is that you can modify the design of your website as much and as often as you want without modifying your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have configured WP site for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your web site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your site’s web design is done. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any theme you want, and then completely modify the look, feel and design of your website in a few minutes, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WordPress site without requiring any website code programming skills. Just pick any theme you want, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your site’s design and modify elements like headers, layout, styling options and more in less than a few minutes …
Because WordPress is made available as open source software, professional website designers can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that thousands of great WordPress themes are made available to WP users. WP are generally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE directory of WP themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent WP themes for free …
(WordPress.org – Free Theme Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider audience of web users.
WordPress themes vary from functional-looking, to creative designs that are simply beautiful and could typically cost thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most premium WordPress themes are fairly inexpensive to buy.
You can see several theme galleries containing stunning examples of great themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Themes
Here are just some of the many benefits of using WordPress themes over using traditional web design:
Easy To Install
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your WP admin user section and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large community of professional web developers who, collectively, contribute thousands of great-looking, high quality WP Themes available to users. Many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all your site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This means you can swap WP themes as often as you need without deleting your site’s content.
- Many themes provide additional features and settings that allow you to customize the site’s layout, style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that enables users to update the theme to newer theme versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically from your admin panel.
- Themes helps you save hundreds of dollars on website development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally very affordable.
Responsive Themes
Many theme developers are now creating WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. laptops, tablets, mobile phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each platform. Users can scroll, read and display your site on most if not all device platforms without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to have installed additional display elements.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website works on all of your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards, practices and techniques of web design coding.
Hopefully, this article has provided you with a better understanding of WP themes, what WordPress themes are, how they help you and your business save money on web development costs, and how WordPress themes make customizing web sites easy.
To learn where to find the best themes for your website, visit this post: Where To Get Great Free And Premium WordPress Web Templates On The Web.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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