Flexible web site publishing tools like the WordPress CMS platform have effectively simplified web design and web development for website owners.
This greatly benefits individuals or businesses thinking about getting a website that they can manage themselves.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of powerful content management systems, if you needed to get a professional website for your business, you would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This process could mean waiting around for many weeks, even months!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this post, we look at what WP themes are, how WordPress themes can help you save money, and how themes allow you to easily customize your website.
Web Design Evolution
Businesses have been benefiting from an evolution in web design that started several years ago. If you are a small business owner, you will want to know more about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on web development or web design costs.
Very briefly, here’s what normally happened before CMS systems like WordPress were introduced:
First, you would meet with a website development company or web designer for a brief. Then, the actual “web design” itself had to be discussed and agreed upon. This meant time and money being spent with someone with web design skills discussing elements of your site like the, colours, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be individually created with all of the design elements and codes scripted into the content. All pages were then assembled together into a web site using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files required to make your website work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and worked how it should (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the web site considered to be finished and ready for delivery.
Then, web design “templates” were introduced”. A website template allows the design of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. The introduction of template elements helped speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also enabled website development firms to work with small business clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web development agencies began adopting “template-based” web design services, web templates were created that could offer different customization features and options, like colour palettes, the ability to select different content styles or header, footer and navigation elements, and so on.
As websites and website editor software evolved, website templates also began to transform into web templating “systems” that let website owners and website designers customize their web site’s visual aspects.
And then, a “blogging” application called WordPress was introduced and helped to kick off a new content management 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
WordPress themes drive the concept of a website templating system much further.
The WordPress theme system controls all of the design elements of the web site. It lets you add a “skin” to your site similarly to what a website template system does but it also also provides you with complete control over the management, presentation and customization aspects of your template features.
As the official WordPress site describes it …
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, a unique feature of the WordPress theme is that how your site looks to site visitors on the outside is an entirely different system from the way your content is managed.
Basically, what this means is that a WP theme lets you modify the appearance of your website as much and as often as you like without modifying your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if WordPress site has been configured for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your website. All e-commerce features, 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 have to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your business website built quickly and get started with any theme you like, and completely customize the look, feel and design of your website in mere minutes, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WordPress site with no web code editing knowledge necessary. Simply pick a WordPress theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and customize elements like header images, layout, styling options and more in a few seconds …
Because WordPress is open source software, commercial web designers can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP template system.
This means that loads of great WordPress themes are made available to WP users. Themes are generally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent WP themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Free Theme Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider audience of web users.
Themes vary from professional-looking, to dynamic designs that are beautiful and would typically cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most premium WordPress themes can be purchased quite inexpensively, especially when you compare the price to what it would have cost you if a web designer had to code it from scratch.
You can view a number of theme galleries containing stunning examples of great WordPress themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over choosing tools that require traditional web template design:
Very Easy To Install
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WordPress administrator login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving online community of professional theme designers and design companies who make thousands of professional WP Themes available to WP users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This means you can swap the “look and feel” of your web site or blog as often as you like without deleting your underlying content of your blog.
- Many WordPress themes provide additional features and settings that enable you to easily customize your theme’s style, layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows you to update the theme to newer theme versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically inside your dashboard.
- Themes allow WordPress users to save hundreds of dollars on website design costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally quite affordable.
Responsive Themes
Many WordPress theme designers are now creating “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically resize to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. PCs, iPads, cell phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and display your site on most device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional browser tools.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site works across all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards and practices of web design coding.
We hope this article has given you a clearer understanding of WordPress themes, what WP themes are, how WP themes can help you and your business save money, and how WP themes allow you to easily customize a web site.
In the next blog post on basic WP features, we show you where to find great WP themes for your website.
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