Advanced website management technologies like the WordPress CMS have effectively improved web design and web development for anyone wanting a website.
This is fantastic news for businesses planning on getting a digital presence that is relatively easy to manage.
Prior to blogging and the introduction of sophisticated CMS technologies, if you wanted a business site, you would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This could take many weeks, sometimes even months!
The development of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, you will learn what WP themes are, how themes save you and your business money on web development costs, and how WP themes let you easily customize your site.
Website Design Revolution
Businesses, especially small businesses, will benefit from a revolution in website design that has been going for a number of years now. If you are a business owner, you will want to learn more about this, because it could save you a lot of time and money on web development or website design costs.
Very briefly, here’s what happened before WordPress was developed:
First, you would meet with a web developer or website designer for a brief. After this, the actual “web design” had to be discussed and agreed upon. This meant spending time and money with a professional web designer going over things of your site such as the layout, colors, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your site then had to be hand-coded with all the design elements and scripts coded into the content. All the pages were then assembled together into a website using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file required to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and functioned the way it was supposed to (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the website deemed to be finished and ready to go live.
The next phase in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “web templates”. Web site templates allow the presentation of the web site to be created separately from the page content. The introduction of templates helped to speed up the web creation process and resulted in lowered production costs. This also enabled website designers to service small business clients and clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses using “template-based” websites increased, templates started being created to provide different custom options, like the ability to choose different colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and website building software developed, web templates also began evolving into web template ”systems”, enabling users to control their web site’s visual aspects.
Then, WordPress was developed and helped to kick off a new web 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 pushes the concept of a web template system much further.
The WP theme system controls the design elements of your web site. It lets you add a “skin” over your site in a similar way that a template system does but also gives you complete control over the management, presentation and ability to customize all template settings.
As per the official WordPress site …
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, a unique and revolutionary feature of the WP theme is that how your website appears to site visitors on the outside is a different thing from your site’s content management aspects.
In plain English terms, what this means is that a theme lets you modify the design of your website as much and as often as you like without modifying your site’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 the site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your website. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your site to be done. You can get your business website built quickly and get started with any WordPress theme you like, and customize the entire look, feel and design of your website in seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site without requiring web code development knowledge. Just pick any WP theme you want, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your web design and customize elements like header images, page layout, typography and more with just a few mouse clicks …
Because WordPress is open source software, web design companies can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that loads of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are generally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent website templates at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – WP Themes Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider range of uses.
WP themes vary from corporate-looking, to clever designs that are quite beautiful and would easily cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most premium WordPress themes are very inexpensive to purchase.
You can view a number of WP theme galleries that include various examples of great themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Themes
Here are just some of the benefits of choosing WordPress themes over choosing applications that require traditional website design:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload it 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 WordPress site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing online community of commercial website designers who contribute thousands of excellent WP Themes available to WordPress users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This makes it possible to replace themes as often as you like without affecting the blog information.
- Many WP themes come with additional functionality and settings that allow you to easily customize the site’s style, layout and design properties and create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables you to update themes to newer versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically inside your admin panel.
- WP themes helps you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically quite inexpensive.
Responsive WordPress Themes
Many WordPress theme developers are now creating themes that incorporate “responsive” design standards.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different platforms. Users can navigate, read and display the site on most device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional browser tools.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will display correctly across all of your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of website design and coding.
I hope that the above article has provided you with a better understanding of themes, what themes are, how themes can help you save money on website design costs, and how themes make customizing web sites easy.
In our next blog post in our article WordPress newbies on basic WordPress features, we show you where to search for great WP themes for your website or blog.
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