The development of flexible web publishing platforms like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) has truly improved web design and web development for users.
This is a great thing for non-technical users that want to own a website that they can manage by themselves.
Prior to blogging and the introduction of user-friendly content management systems, if you wanted to get a professional web site built for your business, you would have to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This process could mean waiting for many weeks, even months!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, you will learn what themes are, how WP themes save you and your business money on website design costs, and how WordPress themes help you easily customize your site.
The Evolution Of Web Design
More website owners are benefiting from a tremendous revolution in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a small business owner, you will want to learn more about this, because it could save your business thousands of dollars on web development or website design costs.
Let’s briefly review how things worked in “traditional” web design before CMS solutions like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a website development firm or web site designer for a brief. Then, the design had to be decided upon. This required time and money being spent with a professional web designer going over design elements of the web site like the layout, colours, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be individually created with all the design elements and scripts coded into the content. All pages were then assembled together into a web site 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 passed testing and worked how it was intended to (and looking the way a client had wanted it to look), was the web site deemed to have been finished and ready to go live.
The next stage in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. Website templates allow the design of the website to be created separately from content on the page. The development of templates helped make creating web sites faster and resulted in lowered production costs. This also allowed website development companies to work with business clients and clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses began adopting “template-based” websites, templates started being introduced that provided various custom features and options, such as the ability to choose different colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and web editor applications evolved, website templates also began to transform into website template ”systems”, which enabled website owners to manage the visual elements of their website.
Then, a “blogging” tool called WordPress came along 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:
About WordPress Themes
WordPress themes push website template systems one step further.
A WordPress theme controls and integrates every aspect of your web design. It allows you to add a “skin” over your site in a similar way that a web template system does but it also also provides you with complete control over the management, presentation and ability to customize 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 features of WordPress is that how your website appears to site visitors externally is a completely different system from your site’s content management settings.
Basically, what this means is that you can modify the design of your site as often as you like without modifying your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have configured your website for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when your site is built using WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website design to be completed. You can get your business website built simply and start with any theme you like, and customize the entire look, feel and design of your website in mere seconds, whenever you choose … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site without the need of web coding knowledge. Just pick any WP theme you like, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your web design and customize elements like header images, layout, typography and more in less than a few minutes …
Since WordPress is open source software, thousands of website designers can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes are made available to WordPress users. WordPress are normally distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE directory of WP themes which allows WordPress users to access thousands of great themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider audience of WordPress site owners.
WordPress themes range from professional-looking, to designs that are stunning and would typically cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most premium themes can be purchased quite cheaply, especially when you compare the price to what it would have cost you if a website designer had to develop it from scratch.
You can see several WP theme galleries that include various examples of themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WP Themes – Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over using web building tools that require traditional website design:
Installation Is Easy And Simple
WordPress themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your admin user section and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free WordPress theme repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving online community of commercial website designers who, collectively, contribute thousands of great-looking, high quality WordPress Themes available to WordPress users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all your site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This means you can replace WP themes as often as you like without deleting your settings.
- Many WP themes come with built-in features and settings that enable you to customize the site’s layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows you to update the theme to a newer theme version without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically inside your site’s administration interface.
- WordPress themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on web development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally very inexpensive.
Responsive Themes
Many theme developers are now creating WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. computers, iPads, cell phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different types of devices. Users can navigate, read and load the site on all devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser elements.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your web site displays well on all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of website design and web coding.
I hope the above article has given you a clearer understanding of WordPress themes, what themes are, how themes can help your business save money, and how themes make customizing sites easy.
In our next article in the article WP newbies on basic WP features, we show you where to search for great WP themes for your website or blog.
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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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