Advanced content management platforms like the WordPress CMS platform have effectively simplified web design and web development for business owners.
This greatly benefits individuals or businesses that want to own a web presence that is relatively simple and easy to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of powerful content management systems, if you needed a professional web site, you had to wait until both the website development and web design processes were fully completed. This could mean waiting for many weeks, sometimes even months!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this article, we look at what WordPress themes are, how themes can help your business save money, and how themes make it easy to customize your WordPress site.
Website Design Evolution
More businesses are benefiting from a revolutionary change in website design that has been going for many years now. If you are a small business owner, you will want to know about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on web development or website design costs.
Very briefly, here’s how things typically worked in “traditional” web design before CMS tools like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a website developer or website designer for a brief. Then, the actual “web design” itself had to be decided upon. This meant spending time and money with a professional web designer going over design elements of your web site such as the, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be individually created with all of your elements and scripts coded into your content. All pages were then assembled together into a web site using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file required to make your website work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and performed the way it should (and looking the way a client had imagined it to look), was the web site deemed to be completed and ready to go live.
The next step in the evolution of business website design was the introduction of “web templates”. A web template allows the design of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. The development of ready-made templates helped speed up the website creation process and resulted in reduced production costs. This also enabled web designers to service businesses with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses started using “template-based” web design services, web templates were created that could provide clients with a range of customization settings, such as the ability to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and web editing tools developed, website templates also started transforming into web template ”systems”, permitting website owners to manage the design elements of their site.
Then, a “blogging” tool called WordPress came along and helped to start a new website 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
WordPress themes drive website template systems one step further.
A WP theme controls all of the design aspects of the web site. It lets you add a “skin” over your entire site much like a web template system does but it provides you with more control over the management and customization of the site’s template settings.
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 quote states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of WordPress is that how your web site appears to site visitors on the outside in no way affects your site’s functional aspects (e.g. content management and functionality).
Basically, what this means is that themes let you modify the appearance of your website as much and as often as you want without affecting your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have set up WordPress website 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, plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when your website is built with WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be done. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any theme you like, and customize the entire look, feel and design of your site in mere seconds, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WordPress site with no web code editing skills necessary. Just pick a WP theme you want, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your web design and modify elements like headers, layout, styling options and more in less than a few minutes …
Because WordPress is open source software, website design companies anywhere in the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP template system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes can be downloaded by WP users. Themes are generally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent website templates completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – WP Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now focused on developing themes for a wider range of users.
WordPress themes vary from minimal-looking, to designs that are quite impressive and would easily cost thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, themes are quite inexpensive to purchase.
You can see a number of WP theme galleries containing various examples of great themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing web development tools that require traditional web design:
Ready To Use In Very Little Time
WP themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving online community of commercial website designers who, collectively, contribute thousands of great WP Themes available to WordPress users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all your site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This allows you swap WordPress themes as often as you want without modifying your site’s underlying information.
- Many WordPress themes come with built-in features and options that allow you to easily customize the site’s style and design elements to create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows you to update the theme to newer versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically within your dashboard.
- WP themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on website design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally quite inexpensive.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many theme developers are now creating WP themes that incorporate “responsive” design standards.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. laptops, tablets, smart phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and display the site on most devices without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional themes.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website will display correctly on your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards and practices of web design.
Hopefully, the above overview has helped you gain a better understanding of WP themes, what WordPress themes are, how they help your business save money on website development costs, and how themes make customizing your web design easy.
In the next article on helping you understand features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for great WordPress themes for your website.
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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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