The development of content management tools like WordPress has effectively improved web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This greatly benefits entrepreneurial-minded people that want to own a digital presence that is easy to manage.
Before “blogging” and the development of user-friendly content management systems, if you needed to get a site for your business, you would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This could take weeks, even months!
WordPress themes changed all this. In this article, you will learn what themes are, how WP themes help your business save money on web development costs, and how WP themes make it easy to customize your site.
A New Development In Website Design
More website owners today will benefit from a revolution in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a small business owner, you may want to know more about this, because it could save your business a lot of time and money on website development or website design costs.
Let’s go over how things typically worked in “traditional” web development before applications like WordPress were developed:
The first step would be to meet with a web developer or web site designer for a brief. Next, the design of the web site itself had to be discussed and agreed upon. This involved time and money being spent with a professional web designer discussing things of the site such as the layout, colours, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be individually created with all of your design elements and scripts coded into the page content. All pages were then assembled into a web site using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files required to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and worked how it was supposed to (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the website deemed as being completed and ready to go live.
Then, web design “templates” were introduced”. Web site templates allow ”look and feel” elements of the web site to be created separately from the page content. The development of templates helped to make the process of site creation faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also allowed web development companies to work with smaller business clients and clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web development firms began choosing “template-based” web design services, web templates started being developed to provide a range of custom settings, such as the option to switch colours, styles, layouts
As websites and website editor software developed, website templates also began transforming into website template “systems” that enable users to control the design aspects of a site.
And then, a “blogging” software called WordPress came along and helped to start a new web revolution …
(WordPress – A Content Publishing Revolution)
To learn more about content management systems and the benefits of the WordPress CMS, see the tutorial below:
About WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme pushes website templating systems much further.
The WordPress theme system controls every aspect of your web design. It allows you to add a “skin” over your entire site much like a template system does but it also also provides users with complete control over the management, appearance and customization aspects of your 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, one of the unique and revolutionary features of WordPress is that how your web site appears to site visitors on the outside does not affect how your content is managed.
Basically, what this means is that a WordPress theme lets you modify the design of your website as often as you like without modifying your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if your website has been set up for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your website built simply and get started with any WordPress theme you like, and completely edit the look, feel and design of your site in mere minutes, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site with no website design skills necessary. Just choose any theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your entire site’s web design and customize elements like headers, layout, typography and more with just a few mouse clicks …
As WordPress is made available as open source software, thousands of website designers can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP template system.
This means that thousands of great WP themes can be downloaded by WP users. Themes are usually distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WP themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of great WordPress themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focused on developing themes for a wider range of applications.
Themes vary from professional-looking, to dynamic designs that are visually impressive and would easily cost thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, WordPress themes can be bought quite cheaply, especially when you compare the cost to what it would have cost you if a website designer had to develop it from scratch.
You can see several theme galleries containing various examples of great premium themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over using traditional web design:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
WP themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip folder that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving community of commercial website designers and design companies who contribute thousands of great WordPress Themes available to WordPress users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all of the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This makes it possible to swap WordPress themes as often as you like without affecting your site data.
- Many themes provide built-in features and options that enable you to easily customize your site’s style and design properties and create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables users to upgrade themes to a newer theme version without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically right within the site’s administration interface.
- WordPress themes lets you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically very inexpensive.
Responsive WordPress Themes
Many theme developers are now developing themes that incorporate “responsive” design standards.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. computers, tablets, mobile phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can scroll, read and load your site on most devices without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser elements.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will display correctly on all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards, practices and techniques of website design and web coding.
We hope that the above overview has helped you gain a better understanding of WP themes, what WP themes are, how they can help your business save money, and how WP themes make customizing your web design easy.
To learn where to search for the best WordPress themes for your blog, see this post: Where To Get Great Paid And Free Responsive WordPress Themes On The Net.
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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