Advanced website management platforms like WordPress have effectively improved web design and web development for anyone wanting a website.
This greatly benefits business owners planning to start a website that they can manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of user-friendly content management systems, if you wanted 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 process could mean waiting around for many weeks, sometimes even many months!
The development of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this article, you will learn what themes are, how themes can help your business save money on web development costs, and how themes make it easy to customize your website.
Website Design Evolution
Businesses have been benefiting from a great change in web design that started a number of years ago. If you are a business owner, you will want to know more about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
In a nutshell, this is what used to happen before CMS systems like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your project with a web site development company or website designer. Next, the design had to be decided upon. This meant time being spent with someone with web site design skills going over areas of the website such as the layout, colours, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with your elements and codes inserted into the content. All the pages were then assembled into a web site using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and worked how it should (and looking the way a client had imagined it to look), was the website deemed to be finished and ready to go live.
Then, website “templates” were developed”. A web template allows design elements of the web site to be created separately from content on the page. The introduction of template elements helped to speed up the web creation process and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also enabled website development agencies to expand their services to include business clients and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web site development companies began choosing “template-based” web design services, templates were introduced that could provide clients with a number of customizable settings, like the ability to switch colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and web editing tools evolved, web templates also began transforming into website templating ”systems”, permitting users and website designers to customize the design components of a website.
Then, a “blogging” software called WordPress was introduced 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:
The WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme expands the idea of a website templating system much further.
The WordPress theme system controls the design areas of your website. It allows you to add a “skin” to your entire site similarly to what a web template system does but also gives you complete control over the management, appearance and ability to customize template features.
As the official WordPress site explains 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, one of the unique features of a WordPress theme is that how your web site appears to site visitors externally is managed independently of how your content is managed.
Basically, what this means is that a theme lets you change the appearance of your site as often as you like without touching your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have configured WordPress website for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your 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 website’s design is done. You can get your website built simply and start with any WordPress theme you want, and completely change the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in a few minutes, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site with no website code editing knowledge required. Just pick a theme you like, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your web design and modify elements like header images, layout, style settings and more in minutes …
Since WordPress is distributed as open source software, website design companies can create themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP template system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WP users. WordPress are usually distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE directory of WordPress themes which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of great web templates completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – Free WordPress Theme Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
Themes range from professional-looking, to fancy designs that are quite impressive and would typically cost many hundreds of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most premium WordPress themes can be purchased fairly cheaply, especially when compared to what it would have cost you if a web designer had to build it from scratch.
You can view several theme galleries containing various examples of great WP themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits & Advantages
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over using traditional website design:
Be Up And Running In Very Little Time
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugins 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 WordPress dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large community of commercial website developers who make thousands of professional WP Themes available to users. Many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all of the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This allows you replace WP themes as often as you want without modifying the underlying content of your website.
- Many themes come with additional built-in functionality and settings that allow you to customize your theme’s layout and design elements and create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets you upgrade themes to a newer theme version without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from within your admin panel.
- WordPress themes allow users to save hundreds of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally very inexpensive.
Responsive Themes
Many WP theme designers are now creating WP themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. PCs, iPads, smart phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can navigate, read and load your site on different devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser elements.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site displays well across all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards and practices of website design and web coding.
I hope that the above article has provided you with a good understanding of themes, what WP themes are, how they can help your business save money on website design costs, and how themes let you easily customize your web site.
To learn where to search for the best themes for your website, visit this page: Finding The Best Free And Premium Responsive WordPress Templates On The Web.
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