Advanced web management technologies like the WordPress CMS platform have effectively improved web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This is great for individuals or businesses planning on getting an online business presence that is relatively simple and easy to manage.
Prior to blogging and the development of powerful CMS tools, if you wanted a professional web site, you had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This could take weeks, sometimes even months!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this blog post, we explore what themes are, how themes save you and your business money on website design costs, and how WP themes let you easily customize your WP site.
A New Development In Website Design
Website owners are benefiting from a tremendous change in web design that has been going for several years now. If you own a business, you may want to learn more about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
Let’s go over how things typically worked in “traditional” web development before CMS systems like WordPress were introduced:
The first step would be to meet with a web development firm or website designer for a brief. After that, the actual design of your site had to be decided upon. This involved time and money being spent with someone with web design skills going over design elements of your website like the layout, colours, styles, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all of the design elements and scripts coded into the page content. All of the pages were then assembled into a web site using hyperlinks and 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 performed the way it was supposed to (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the web site considered to be completed and ready for delivery.
The next stage in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “web templates”. Website templates allow ”look and feel” elements of the web site to be created separately from the page content. Having template elements helped speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also allowed web development companies to service business clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses started adopting “template-based” web design services, web templates started being created that offered clients with a number of customizable features and options, such as colour palettes, the ability to specify different styles or elements, etc …
As websites and website editing applications evolved, web templates also started evolving into website templating “systems” that let users control their website’s design elements.
And then, WordPress was introduced 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:
The WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme takes the concept of a web templating system even further.
The WP theme system controls the design areas of a web site. It lets you add a “skin” over your site in a similar way that a website template system does but also gives you complete control over the management, presentation and customization aspects of all template features.
As stated in the official WordPress 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 the above quote states, a unique feature of the WordPress theme is that the way your website looks to visitors is controlled independently of the management of your content.
In plain English terms, what this means is that you can change the appearance of your site as much and as often as you like without affecting your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if WP website has been configured for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your web site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because when your website is powered 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 simply and start with any WordPress theme you want, and then modify the entire look, feel and design of your website in mere seconds, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site with no website code editing skills necessary. Just pick any WP theme you like, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your site’s design and modify elements like headers, layout, style settings and more in less than a few minutes …
Since WordPress is distributed as open source software, commercial website design companies can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are generally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of excellent WP themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
WordPress themes vary from professional-looking, to designs that are visually breathtaking and could normally cost many hundreds of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most WP themes can be purchased quite inexpensively, especially when you compare the cost to what it would have cost you if a website designer had to build it from scratch.
You can view a number of theme galleries that include stunning examples of great WordPress themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits & Advantages Of WordPress Themes
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional website design:
WP Theme Installation Is Easy
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your admin area and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving online community of professional web designers who, collectively, make thousands of fantastic WP Themes available to WordPress users. Many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all of your site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This makes it possible to swap themes as often as you want without affecting your underlying content of your website.
- Many WordPress themes provide additional built-in features and settings that enable you to customize the theme’s style, layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets users update themes to a newer theme version without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from within your admin panel.
- Themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on web design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically quite inexpensive.
Responsive Theme Design
Many theme developers are now creating “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically resize to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can navigate, read and display a site on most if not all device platforms without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to have installed additional browser tools.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site works on your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards, practices and techniques of web design.
I hope that this overview has given you a better understanding of WordPress themes, what WordPress themes are, how they help your business save money, and how WP themes make customizing web sites easy.
To learn where to find the best WordPress themes for your website, visit this page: Where To Get The Best Free And Paid WordPress Web Templates On The Web.
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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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