The introduction of content management technologies like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) has effectively improved web design and web development for business owners.
This is great for businesses thinking of running a website that is relatively simple and easy to manage.
Before blogging and the introduction of sophisticated content management systems, if you wanted to build a professional site for your business, you typically would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This could take many weeks, sometimes even many months!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this post, we take a look at what themes are, how WordPress themes save you money on web development costs, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize your site.
A New Development In Website Design
Businesses, especially small businesses, are benefiting from a great change in web design that started several years ago. If you are a business owner, you may want to know more about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on website development or web design costs.
Let’s briefly go over what happened before WordPress came along:
First, you would meet with a website development firm or designer for a brief. Next, the design would be decided upon. This required spending time with a professional website designer going over design elements of the site such as the layout, colors, styles, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all your elements and codes written into the content. The pages were then assembled into a web site using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files required to make your website work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and functioned the way it was intended to (and looking how the 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 templates”. A web site template allows presentation elements of the website to be worked on separately from content on the page. Having template elements helped to make the process of creating web sites faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also allowed website developers and designers to expand their services to include smaller business clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses adopting “template-based” websites increased, templates started being developed to offer clients with various customizable features, like colour palettes, the ability to select different styles, formats, header, footer and navigation elements, layouts, etc …
As web sites and website building applications developed, website templates also began evolving into web template “systems” that let users control their website’s visual components.
Then, a “blogging” application called WordPress was developed 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:
About WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme takes web template systems further.
A WP theme controls and integrates every aspect of your website design. It allows you to add a “skin” to your site much like a template system does but it provides you with more control over the management and ability to customize your site’s 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 states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of WordPress is that the way your website displays to visitors on the outside is managed separately from your site’s functional aspects (e.g. content management and functionality).
Basically, what this means is that a theme lets you change the design of your website 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 website for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your web design to be completed. You can get your business website built quickly and get started with any WordPress theme you like, and then completely modify the look, feel and design of your site in mere seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site with no website coding knowledge required. Simply pick any WordPress theme you like, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like headers, layout, style settings and more in minutes …
Since WordPress is open source software, commercial website design companies all around the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP template system.
This means that thousands of great WP themes are made available to WP users. Themes are generally distributed as Free Software 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 directory of WordPress themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of great web templates at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Free Theme Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider audience of web users.
Themes range from bare-looking, to designs that are stunning and could typically cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most WordPress themes are fairly inexpensive to buy.
You can see a number of WP theme galleries containing many examples of great themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of choosing WordPress themes over choosing traditional website design:
Easy, Fast & Simple To Install
WP themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your admin user account and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WP dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving community of professional web designers who, collectively, contribute thousands of excellent WordPress Themes available to WP users. Many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This makes it possible to change WP themes as often as you need without disturbing your content.
- Many WordPress themes provide additional features and settings that let you customize the site’s style, layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables users to update themes to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically from the dashboard.
- Themes allow WP users to save thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally quite inexpensive.
About Responsive Themes
Many WP theme designers are now developing “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. laptops, tablets, smart phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different platforms. Users can scroll, read and load a site on most if not all device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to install additional browser tools.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site works on your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards of website design and web coding.
Hopefully, the above article has given you a better overview of WP themes, what WordPress themes are, how themes help your business save money, and how WP themes make it easy to customize a WP site.
To learn where to search for great WordPress themes for your website, go here:
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