The development of advanced content management technologies like the WordPress CMS has effectively simplified web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This greatly benefits businesses wanting to start an online business presence that is relatively easy to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of powerful content management systems, if you needed to build a web site for your business, you normally would have to wait until both the web development and website design processes were completely done. This could take many weeks, sometimes even many months!
The development of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this blog post, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how they help your business save money, and how WordPress themes let you easily customize your site.
A New Development In Web Site Design
Businesses have been benefiting from a revolution in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a business, you will want to know about this, because it can save you a lot of time and money on website development or web design costs.
In a nutshell, this is what used to happen before software like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a web developer or web designer for a brief. Then, the actual design would be discussed and agreed upon. This meant spending time and money with someone with web site design skills going over elements of the website such as the layout, colours, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be hand-coded with the elements and scripts coded around your content. All pages were then assembled together into a website using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file required to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and was performing the way it should (and looking the way a client had imagined it to look), was the website deemed as being finished and ready to go live.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. A web site template allows ”look and feel” elements of the web site to be worked on separately from content on the page. The introduction of ready-made templates helped to make the process of site development faster and resulted in lowered production costs. This also allowed web developers to expand their services to include smaller businesses and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web site development agencies began using “template-based” websites, templates were created that offered clients with a range of custom options, such as color palettes, the ability to specify different styles and page layouts, and so on.
As web sites and web editor software evolved, website templates also started transforming into website template ”systems”, which permitted website owners to control their website’s visual elements.
And then, WordPress was developed and helped to start a new online publishing revolution …
(WordPress – A Content Publishing Revolution)
To learn more about content management systems and the benefits of the WordPress CMS, see the tutorial below:
WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme expands web template systems even further.
The WordPress theme system controls every aspect of your website design. It allows you to add a “skin” over your site much like a web template system does but it gives you complete control over the management and ability to customize template features.
As the official WordPress site explains …
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, a unique and revolutionary feature of a WP theme is that the way your website looks to visitors is controlled independently of how your website is configured in the backend to handle areas like content management and functionality.
In simple terms, what this means is that a theme lets you change the look and feel of your site as much and as often as you like without affecting your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if your site has been configured for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your 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 intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your business website built simply and start with any WP theme you want, and then completely change the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site without the need of website coding skills. Simply pick a WordPress theme you want, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and modify elements like header images, layout, typography and more in less than a few minutes …
Since WordPress is distributed as open source software, web designers from all over the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes are made available to WordPress users. WP are normally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
WP themes range from functional-looking, to designs that are quite beautiful and would normally cost thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most themes can be bought quite inexpensively, especially when you compare the price to what you would have been charged if a website designer had to code it from scratch.
You can see a number of theme galleries that include stunning examples of great premium themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits And Advantages Of Using Themes
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using traditional web design:
Ready To Use In Very Little Time
WordPress themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip folder that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving community of commercial theme designers and design companies who contribute thousands of professional WordPress Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent design across all your blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This allows you replace WP themes as often as you want without changing your blog content.
- Many WordPress themes come with built-in functionality and settings that let you easily customize your theme’s layout, style and design elements to create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that enables users to update the theme to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from within your dashboard.
- WordPress themes lets you save thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically very inexpensive.
About Responsive Themes
Many theme designers are now creating WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” functionality.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust screen size 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 navigate, read and load the site on a range of devices without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to install additional browser tools.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will display correctly 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, practices and techniques of website design coding.
We hope the above article has helped you gain a better understanding of themes, what themes are, how they help you save money on web design costs, and how themes make customizing websites easy.
In the next article in the article WordPress newbies on understanding basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for the best themes for your website.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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