The development of website management systems like WordPress has effectively simplified web design and web development for non-technical website owners.
This is a great thing for businesses planning to start a website that they can manage by themselves.
Before blogging and the introduction of user-friendly content management systems, if you needed to get a professional website for your business, you had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were completely done. This could mean waiting for many weeks, sometimes even months!
WordPress themes changed all this. In this blog post, you will learn what WP themes are, how WP themes save you and your business money on website development costs, and how themes make it easy to customize your website.
Revolutionary Web Site Design
Website owners have benefited from a great change in web design that started several years ago. If you are a business owner, you will want to know more about this, because it could save you a lot of time and money on website development or website design costs.
Let’s go over what happened before a CMS tool like WordPress came along:
First, you would meet with a web developer or website designer for a brief. Then, the actual design of the web site would be decided upon. This meant time being spent with a professional website designer discussing areas of the web site like the layout, colours, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be individually created with all of your elements and codes scripted into the content. All pages were then assembled into a website using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and was working the way it was supposed to (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the website considered to have been finished and ready to go live.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. A web template allows ”look and feel” elements of the website to be worked on separately from the page content. The development of templates helped make the process of creating web sites faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also allowed website developers and designers to work with small business clients and clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses started choosing “template-based” web design services, web templates were developed that could offer a number of customization features and options, like colour palettes, the ability to select different styles and page layouts, etc …
As web sites and web editor applications evolved, web templates also began evolving into web template ”systems”, letting users manage their website’s visual elements.
Then, a “blogging” software called WordPress was developed 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
WordPress themes expand website template systems further.
A WordPress theme controls the design elements of the website. It allows you to add a “skin” to your entire site similarly to what a website template system does but also provides users with more control over the management and ability to customize all template options.
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 the above states, a unique and revolutionary feature of a WP theme is that the way your web site displays to visitors on the outside is a different system from how your website is configured internally to handle areas like content management and functionality.
Basically, what this means is that themes let you change the look and feel of your site as often as you want without modifying your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have configured WordPress website for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when your site is powered with WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your business website built simply and start with any theme you like, and then edit the entire look, feel and design of your site in mere minutes, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site without needing web coding skills. Simply pick any theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your site’s design and modify elements like header images, layout, typography and more in less than a few minutes …
Because WordPress is distributed as open source software, professional web designers can design themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of great WordPress themes are made available to WP users. WordPress are generally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent WordPress themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider audience of WordPress site owners.
Themes vary from professional-looking, to designs that are stunning and would typically cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most premium themes can be bought very cheaply, especially when you compare the price to what you would have had to pay if a website designer had to code it from scratch.
You can see several theme galleries that include many 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 traditional website design:
Ready To Start Using In Very Little Time
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving online community of commercial web developers and development companies who, collectively, contribute thousands of professional WP Themes available to WordPress users. And 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, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This allows you swap WordPress themes as often as you want without modifying your underlying content.
- Many themes come with built-in functionality and settings that let you easily customize the site’s layout and design elements and create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that lets you update the theme to a newer theme version without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically inside your dashboard.
- Themes allow users to save hundreds of dollars on website development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically quite affordable.
Responsive WP Theme Design
Many WordPress theme designers are now developing “responsive” WP themes.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. laptops, iPads, mobile phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can navigate, read and display your site on various device platforms without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to install additional display elements.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site displays well across all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards of web design.
We hope this basic overview has helped you gain a better understanding of themes, what themes are, how they can help you save money, and how WP themes make it easy to customize your WordPress site.
In the next blog post on basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for the best themes for your website or blog.
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