The development of web site management tools like the WordPress CMS platform has truly simplified web design and web development for website owners.
This is a great thing for businesses planning to start or build a website that they can manage themselves.
Prior to blogging and the introduction of powerful and effective CMS applications, if you needed a web site, you had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were fully completed. This process could mean waiting around for many weeks, sometimes even months!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this blog post, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how WP themes save you money on website development costs, and how themes help you easily customize your WordPress site.
Web Design Evolution
More businesses today have been benefiting from a tremendous change in web design that started many years ago. If you own a business, you may want to know about this, because it could save you a lot of time and money on website development or website design costs.
Let’s briefly review how things used to work in “traditional” web development before tool like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a website developer or designer for a brief. After this, the actual “web design” would be discussed and agreed upon. This involved time and money being spent with someone with website design skills going over elements of the site like the, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all of the elements and scripts coded around the content. All the pages were then assembled into a website using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and functioned the way it should (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the web site considered as being finished and ready to go live.
Then, web design “templates” were developed”. A web site template allows the design of the website to be worked on separately from the page content. Having template elements helped speed up the process of developing web sites and resulted in reduced production costs. This also enabled web development firms to work with businesses with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses using “template-based” web design services increased, web templates were created that provided clients with expanding customizable features, like the ability to switch colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and web building applications developed, web templates also started transforming into web templating “systems” that permit website owners to customize the design elements of their website.
Then, WordPress came along 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:
WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme pushes the concept of a website template system further.
The WP theme system controls the design elements of the website. It allows you to add a “skin” to your entire site much like a website template system does but it also also provides you with more control over the management, appearance and customization aspects of the site’s 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 stated above, a unique feature of WordPress is that how your site displays to visitors externally is controlled independently of how your content is managed.
Basically, what this means is that you can modify the look and feel of your website as much and as often as you want without modifying your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if your site has been set up for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this important?
Because when your website is built using WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your website built simply and start with any WordPress theme you like, and completely customize the look, feel and design of your site in seconds, whenever you choose … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site with no website coding skills required. Just choose any WordPress theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and customize elements like headers, page layout, typography and more in a few seconds …
As WordPress is open source software, website designers can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that thousands of great WordPress themes are made available to WordPress users. Themes are usually distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE directory of WP themes which allows WordPress users to access thousands of great themes for free …
(WordPress.org – Free Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider range of users.
WP themes vary from professional-looking, to clever designs that are simply stunning and would typically cost many hundreds of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most premium themes are fairly inexpensive to buy.
You can see several WP theme galleries that include stunning examples of themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just some of the benefits of choosing WordPress themes over using web development applications that require traditional web template design:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin user section and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving online community of commercial theme designers and design companies who, collectively, contribute thousands of great-looking, high quality WordPress Themes available to WP users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all of your site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This makes it possible to swap WP themes as often as you like without affecting the site’s settings.
- Many themes come with built-in functionality and settings that let you easily customize your site’s style, layout and design elements and create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets users upgrade themes to a newer theme version without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically inside the admin panel.
- WP themes lets you save thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally quite affordable.
Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many theme designers are now developing “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can scroll, read and display a site on different device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to install additional display elements.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your web site will work correctly on your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of web design and coding.
Hopefully, this article has given you a clearer understanding of themes, what WordPress themes are, how WP themes can help you and your business save money, and how WP themes make it easy to customize your WP site.
In our next blog post in our article series for non-technical users on helping you understand WP features, we show you where to search for the best themes for your website.
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