The introduction of web publishing systems like WordPress has effectively simplified web design and web development for website owners.
This greatly benefits businesses planning to start or build a digital presence that they can manage themselves.
Before “blogging” and the introduction of sophisticated content management systems, if you needed to get a website for your business, you typically would have to wait until both the website development and website design processes were fully completed. This could mean waiting around for weeks, even many months!
WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how themes save you and your business money on web development costs, and how WP themes help you easily customize your website.
Web Design Evolution
More businesses have benefited from a revolution in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a small business, you may want to learn about this, because it can save your business thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
Let’s take a look at what happened before solution like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your project with a web development agency or designer. After that, the design of your website would be discussed and agreed upon. This meant time being spent with someone with website design skills discussing design elements of your web site like the, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your site then had to be individually created with all of your design elements and codes written into your content. The pages were then assembled into a web site using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files needed to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and performed the way it was intended to (and looking the way the client had imagined it to look), was the website deemed to have been finished and ready for sign off.
Then, web design “templates” were introduced”. Web templates allow the ”look and feel” of the website to be worked on separately from content on the page. Having ready-made templates helped to speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed web developers to expand their services to include small businesses with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses using “template-based” websites increased, web templates started being introduced to provide a number of customization features, such as the option to switch colours, styles, layouts
As websites and website editor tools evolved, website templates also began to transform into web template ”systems”, letting users manage the design components of their web site.
Then, a “blogging” tool called WordPress was developed and helped to kick off a new web 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 web templating systems much further.
A WordPress theme controls the design elements of the web site. It allows you to add a “skin” to your site similarly to what a website template system does but also gives you more control over the management, appearance and ability to customize your template options.
According to 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 above, one of the unique and revolutionary features of the WP theme is that the way your site displays to site visitors is a different thing from the management of your content.
In plain English terms, what this means is that WP themes let you change the appearance of your site as much and as often as you want without touching your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if WordPress website has been configured for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be done. You can get your business website built quickly and get started with any WordPress theme you want, and then customize the entire look, feel and design of your site in seconds, 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. Simply choose any WP theme you want, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and modify elements like header images, layout, style settings and more in a few seconds …
Since WordPress is open source software, hundreds of website designers can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of great WordPress themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are usually distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great WordPress themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Free WP Theme Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider range of users.
Themes vary from simple-looking, to designs that are visually breathtaking and could easily cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most themes are fairly inexpensive.
You can view a number of WP theme galleries containing many examples of great premium themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits And Advantages Of Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over using traditional web design:
Installation Is Easy
WP themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving online community of professional website designers who, collectively, contribute thousands of great-looking, high quality WordPress Themes available to WordPress users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all of your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This allows you swap themes as often as you want without disturbing the website’s information.
- Many WordPress themes come with built-in functionality and settings that let you easily customize your site’s layout, style and design elements to create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that lets users update the theme to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically within the site’s administration interface.
- WP themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on website design costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically quite inexpensive.
About Responsive WP Theme Design
Many theme designers are now creating themes that incorporate “responsive” design standards.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. laptops, iPads, smart phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and load your site on most device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional themes.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site displays well on all 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.
Hopefully, the above article has helped you gain a clearer understanding of WP themes, what themes are, how WP themes help your business save money, and how WP themes make customizing web sites easy.
In our next article in the article WordPress newbies on basic WordPress features, we show you where to find the best themes for your blog.
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