The development of flexible content management applications like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) has effectively improved web design and web development for users.
This is a great thing for entrepreneurial-minded people thinking of running a website that is easy to manage.
Before blogging and the development of powerful and effective CMS applications, if you needed a site, you typically would have to wait until both the website development and web design processes were completely done. This process could take many weeks, even many months!
The introduction of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this blog post, we explain what themes are, how WP themes can help you save money on website design costs, and how themes help you easily customize your site.
A New Development In Web Design
Businesses have benefited from an evolution in website design that started several years ago. If you are a small business owner, you may want to know more about this, because it could save your business thousands of dollars on web development or web design costs.
Very briefly, here’s how things typically worked in “traditional” web development before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your requirements with a web development firm or designer. Then, the “web design” had to be discussed and agreed upon. This involved time being spent with someone with website design skills discussing elements of your website such as the layout, colors, formats, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all of your design elements and scripts coded around the page content. The pages were then assembled into a website using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your website work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and performed the way it should (and looking the way a client had imagined it to look), was the web site considered to have been finished and ready for delivery.
The next stage in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. A web template allows the presentation of the web site to be worked on separately from content on the page. Having templates helped speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also enabled web developers and designers to service businesses and clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web site development agencies began using “template-based” websites, web templates were designed that could provide clients with expanding custom features, such as colour palettes, the ability to pick different page layouts and styles, etc …
As websites and website editing tools evolved, web templates also started to transform into web template ”systems”, letting users customize the design elements of a website.
And then, WordPress came along and helped to start 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
WordPress themes push the idea of a website template system much further.
The WordPress theme system controls all of the design aspects of your web site. It allows you to add a “skin” to your entire site much like a web template system does but it gives you more control over the management and customization aspects of all template options.
As WordPress puts 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 the above quote states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of WordPress is that the way your web site looks to site visitors is controlled independently of the way your content is managed.
Basically, what this means is that WordPress themes let you change the look and feel of your site as often as you like without touching your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if WP website has been set up for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be completed. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any WP theme you like, and then change the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in minutes, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site without requiring website design skills. Just pick any theme you want, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your website design and customize elements like header images, page layout, styling options and more with just a couple of mouse clicks …
Because WordPress is distributed as open source software, web designers can create themes specifically for the WordPress CMS 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 General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of great website templates at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider range of applications.
WP themes range from corporate-looking, to designs that are quite beautiful and could normally cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most premium WordPress themes are really inexpensive.
You can view a number of WP theme galleries containing stunning examples of great premium themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits & Advantages Of Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over using web development applications that require traditional web template design:
WordPress Theme Installation Is Easy
WP themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin to your Plugins folder via your WP dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free WP theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress site’s admin area.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving community of professional web designers who make thousands of fantastic WP Themes available to WP users. Many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all of the blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This means you can change themes as often as you like without affecting your site data.
- Many themes provide additional built-in features and settings that allow you to customize the site’s style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that allows users to upgrade themes to newer theme versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically inside the dashboard.
- Themes helps you save hundreds of dollars on website design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically quite affordable.
Responsive Theme Design
Many theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and display a site on a range of devices without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional display elements.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website will work correctly on your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards and practices of website design.
Hopefully, the above article has given you a better understanding of themes, what WordPress themes are, how WordPress themes can help your business save money, and how WP themes make customizing websites easy.
In our next article on understanding basic WP features, we show you where to find the best themes for your website.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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