The introduction of web management tools like the WordPress CMS platform has effectively improved web design and web development for website owners.
This greatly benefits businesses that want a website that they can fully manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of user-friendly content management systems, if you wanted to get a professional web site for your business, you would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This could mean weeks, even sometimes many months of waiting for the work to be done!
WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, we look at what WordPress themes are, how WordPress themes can help you and your business save money, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize your WordPress site.
A Revolution In Website Design
Businesses will benefit from a great change in web design that has been going for a number of years now. If you are a business owner, you will want to know more about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on website development or website design costs.
Very briefly, here’s how things used to work in “traditional” web development before solutions like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a web development company or designer for a brief. Next, the actual ”look and feel” of the web site itself would be decided upon. This required time and money being spent with someone with web design skills going over things of your web site such as the layout, colours, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all of your elements and scripts coded into your content. The pages were then assembled into a website using links 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 once everything passed testing and performed the way it should (and looking the way a client had imagined it to look), was the website deemed to have been completed and ready for delivery.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. Website templates allow the presentation of the web site to be worked on separately from content on the page. The development of templates helped speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in lowered production costs. This also allowed website designers to service smaller business clients and clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses began choosing “template-based” web design services, templates were created that provided clients with different customization features and options, like the ability to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As websites and web building tools evolved, web templates also started transforming into web template “systems” that permit website owners to customize the design components of their website.
Then, a “blogging” application called WordPress was developed 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:
About WordPress Themes
WordPress themes take web template systems one step further.
A WP theme controls and unifies every aspect of your web design. It allows you to add a “skin” over your site in a similar way that a template system does but it provides you with more control over the management and customization of template features.
As the official WordPress site states …
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 a WP theme is that the way your web site looks to site visitors externally in no way affects how your website is configured internally to handle areas like content management and functionality.
Basically, what this means is that a theme lets you modify the design of your website as much and as often as you want without modifying your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if WP website has been configured 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, site settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website design to be completed. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any WordPress theme you like, and then change the entire look, feel and design of your site in seconds, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WP site without requiring website coding skills. Just choose any WordPress theme you like, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your web design and customize elements like header images, layout, typography and more with just a few mouse clicks …
As WordPress is made available as open source software, web design companies all around the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes are made available to WordPress users. WP are normally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE directory of WP themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of great themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
Themes range from professional-looking, to designs that are simply impressive and would typically cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most premium WordPress themes can be purchased fairly cheaply, especially when you compare the price to what it would have cost you if a website designer had to build it from scratch.
You can see a number of theme galleries containing many examples of great WP themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits & Advantages
Here are just a few of the benefits of choosing WordPress themes over choosing web development tools that require traditional web template design:
Ready To Use In Very Little Time
WP themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WP dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large online community of professional theme developers who make thousands of quality WordPress Themes available to WordPress users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all the blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This makes it possible to replace the “look and feel” of your website as often as you like without changing your underlying content.
- Many WP themes come with built-in functionality and settings that let you easily customize your theme’s layout and design elements and create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets users update the theme to a newer theme version without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from your site’s administration interface.
- Themes helps you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are typically very inexpensive.
Responsive Theme Design
Many WordPress theme developers are now developing WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” web design.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and display the site on most if not all devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to have installed additional browser tools.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your web site will display correctly across your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards of web design coding.
I hope that this basic overview has helped you gain a better understanding about WordPress themes, what themes are, how WordPress themes help you save money on web development costs, and how WP themes make customizing web sites easy.
To learn where to find the best WordPress themes for your blog, go here:
***
"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
***