The introduction of advanced web site publishing technologies like WordPress has truly improved web design and web development for website owners.
This is great for non-technical users wanting to start a digital presence that they can easily manage.
Prior to blogging and the introduction of easy-to-use content management systems, if you needed to build a site built for your business, you normally had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were fully completed. This could take weeks, even months!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this blog post, you will learn what themes are, how they can help you save money on website design costs, and how WordPress themes let you easily customize your WordPress site.
Website Design Evolution
More website owners today will benefit from a tremendous change in website design that has been going for a number of years now. If you own a business, you will want to learn more about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
Very briefly, here’s what used to happen before a CMS solution like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a website development company or designer for a brief. After this, the “web design” itself had to be discussed and agreed upon. This required spending time and money with a professional web designer discussing areas of the website like the, colours, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be individually created with all your design elements and codes scripted into your content. All pages were then assembled into a web site using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file required to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and functioned how it was supposed to (and looking the way a client had imagined it to look), was the web site deemed to be completed and ready to go live.
Then, website “templates” came along”. A website template allows presentation elements of the website to be worked on separately from content on the page. The development of ready-made templates helped to make creating websites faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also enabled web designers to service businesses with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses began using “template-based” web design services, web templates started being developed to provide expanding customizable features, such as the option to switch colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and web editing tools evolved, web templates also began transforming into web template ”systems”, letting users manage the visual elements of their web site.
And then, a “blogging” application called WordPress was introduced 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:
The WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme takes the concept of a web templating system much further.
A WP theme controls and unifies every aspect of your web site design. It allows you to add a “skin” over your entire site in a similar way that a template system does but also provides users with more control over the management, presentation and customization aspects of the template options.
As WordPress has described in its web 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 stated in the quote above, a unique and revolutionary feature of the WP theme is that the way your website looks to site visitors does not affect how your website functions internally to handle areas like content management and functionality.
In simple terms, what this means is that themes let you change the appearance of your website as much and as often as you like without affecting your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have set up your website for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your 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 the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your website design to be done. You can get your website built simply and get started with any theme you like, and change the entire look, feel and design of your website in mere minutes, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site without requiring any website coding skills. Simply choose a WordPress theme you want, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like headers, layout, typography and more with just a couple of mouse clicks …
As WordPress is open source software, professional web designers can design themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that thousands of great WordPress themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. WP are generally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to access thousands of great themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – WP 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 bare-looking, to designs that are quite impressive and would easily cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to design. Surprisingly, themes can be purchased fairly cheaply, especially when compared to what you would have had to pay if a web designer had to build it from scratch.
You can view several theme galleries that include many examples of great premium themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of choosing WordPress themes over using tools that require traditional website design:
Ready To Use In Very Little Time
WP themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free WP theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing community of professional website designers who, collectively, make thousands of excellent WP Themes available to users. Many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent design across all the blog’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 affecting your site information.
- Many themes come with additional built-in features and options that allow you to customize the site’s style, layout and design elements and create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables users to upgrade the theme to a newer theme version without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically from your admin panel.
- WP themes allow WP users to save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically very affordable.
Responsive WP Themes
Many WP theme designers are now developing WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” functionality.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. PCs, iPads, cell phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can scroll, read and display the site on all device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to install additional display elements.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your web site will display correctly on all of 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, practices and techniques of web design coding.
We hope that this article has provided you with a clearer overview of WordPress themes, what WordPress themes are, how they help your business save money, and how WP themes make customizing websites easy.
In our next blog post on helping you understand features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to find great themes for your blog.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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