Flexible web management systems like the WordPress CMS have truly simplified web design and web development for business owners.
This is a great thing for non-technical users planning to start a digital presence that they can fully manage by themselves.
Prior to blogging and the introduction of sophisticated CMS solutions, if you needed to build a professional web site built for your business, you normally had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were completely done. This process could mean weeks, even months of waiting around!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this article, you will learn what themes are, how WordPress themes save your business money on web design costs, and how themes allow you to easily customize your site.
Revolutionary Web Site Design
More businesses today have been benefiting from a tremendous revolution in web design that has been going for several years now. If you own a business, you will want to learn more about this, because it could save your business thousands of dollars on website development and web design costs.
Very briefly, here’s how things used to work in “traditional” website design before WordPress were introduced:
First, you would meet with a website developer or designer for a brief. After that, the actual “web design” itself had to be decided upon. This involved spending time with someone with web design skills going over design elements of the website such as the, colours, formats, graphic elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be individually created with all of the design elements and scripts coded into your page content. The pages were then assembled together into a website using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files required to make your website work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and worked the way it should (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the website deemed as being completed and ready to go live.
The next phase in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “website templates”. Web site templates allow presentation elements of the website to be created separately from content on the page. Having templates helped speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also enabled website development firms to expand their services to include small business clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web development agencies began choosing “template-based” websites, templates started being introduced that could offer a number of customization options, such as the option to switch colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and web editing tools developed, website templates also started to transform into website template ”systems”, enabling users to customize their website’s design aspects.
And then, WordPress was introduced and helped to start 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:
The WordPress Theme
WordPress themes push the idea of a website template system even further.
A WordPress theme controls the design elements of the web site. It allows you to add a “skin” to your entire site in a similar way that a template system does but it also also gives you complete control over the management and customization of 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 stated above, a unique and revolutionary feature of WordPress is that how your site appears to visitors does not affect the way your content is managed.
In plain English terms, what this means is that WP themes let you modify the look and feel of your website as often as you like without modifying your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if WP website has been set up 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, settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your site to be completed. You can get your business website built simply and get started with any WordPress theme you like, and edit the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in a few 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 design skills necessary. Just pick a theme you want, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like headers, layout, styling options and more in minutes …
Since WordPress is open source software, website design companies from all over the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes can be downloaded by WP users. Themes are usually distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE directory of WP themes which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of great WP themes for free …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider audience of WordPress site owners.
WordPress themes vary from simple-looking, to designs that are visually impressive and could normally cost many hundreds of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most premium WP themes can be bought very inexpensively, especially when you compare the price to what you would have been charged if a website designer had to code it from scratch.
You can see a number of WP theme galleries containing various examples of great premium themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Using Themes
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using traditional web design:
WordPress Theme Installation Is Easy
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip file that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP admin section and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large online community of professional theme developers who, collectively, make thousands of high quality WordPress Themes available to users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all of your site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This means you can replace themes as often as you want without affecting your underlying content of your blog.
- Many themes come with additional built-in features and settings that let you easily customize your site’s style, layout and design properties and create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that allows you to upgrade themes to a newer theme version without losing its unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from within the admin panel.
- WP themes allow WordPress users to save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are typically very inexpensive.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many theme designers are now developing “responsive” WordPress themes.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. laptops, iPads, smart phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each platform. Users can scroll, read and display your site on a range of device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to install additional display elements.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your web site works on all of your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards of website design coding.
I hope that the above article has given you a clearer understanding of themes, what themes are, how WP themes help you save money, and how WP themes make customizing web sites easy.
To learn where to search for the best WordPress themes for your website or blog, go here:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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