The development of web site management platforms like the WordPress CMS platform has truly simplified web design and web development for web users.
This greatly benefits entrepreneurial-minded people thinking about running a website that is relatively simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Before “blogging” and the development of powerful and simple CMS software, if you needed to build a website for your business, you would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This process could mean waiting for weeks, sometimes even months!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this post, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how WP themes save you and your business money on web development costs, and how themes allow you to easily customize your website.
The Evolution Of Web Site Design
Businesses, especially small businesses, will benefit from a tremendous revolution in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a business owner, you may want to learn about this, because it can save you thousands of dollars on web development or website design costs.
Very briefly, here’s how things used to work in “traditional” website development before WordPress were developed:
First, you would meet with a website developer or designer for a brief. Next, the actual “web design” itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This required spending time with someone with web site design skills going over things of your website such as the layout, colors, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be individually created with all of the elements and scripts coded into the page content. All pages were then assembled into a website using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and performed the way it should (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the web site considered to be completed and ready to go live.
The next phase in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “web templates”. A web template allows design elements of the website to be worked on separately from content on the page. Having templates helped make the process of web site development faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also allowed web development agencies to expand their services to include businesses with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses started choosing “template-based” websites, web templates were designed that provided clients with a number of customizable options, like the option to switch colours, styles, layouts
As websites and website editor software evolved, web templates also started to transform into web templating ”systems”, which allowed users to control the visual aspects of a site.
Then, WordPress was introduced and helped to start a new business 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:
About WordPress Themes
WordPress themes expand website template systems even further.
A WP theme controls and integrates all of the design aspects of a website. It lets you add a “skin” to your entire site in a similar way that a template system does but it gives you more control over the management, presentation and ability to customize all template features.
As WordPress has explained in its official 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 stated in the quote above, one of the unique features of a WP theme is that the way your website looks to site visitors is kept independent of the management of your content.
Basically, what this means is that you can change the look and feel of your site as often as you like without modifying your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have set up your website for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your website. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because when your site is built with WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your web design to be completed. You can get your business website built simply and get started with any theme you like, and customize the entire look, feel and design of your website in seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site with no website code development skills required. Just pick a theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your web design and customize elements like header images, layout, typography and more in minutes …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, website designers can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. WP are generally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider audience of web users.
Themes range from professional-looking, to stylish designs that are quite stunning and would typically cost many hundreds of dollars to design. Surprisingly, themes are quite inexpensive.
You can see a number of WP theme galleries containing various examples of themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits And Advantages Of WordPress Themes
Here are just some of the many benefits of choosing WordPress themes over using web development applications that require traditional web template design:
Easy, Quick & Simple To Install
Themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your administrator area and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free WP theme directory at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large community of professional theme designers and design companies who, collectively, make thousands of excellent WordPress Themes available to users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all the blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This makes it possible to swap the “look and feel” of your templates as often as you need without disturbing your settings.
- Many WordPress themes come with built-in functionality and settings that let you customize your site’s style and design properties to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that allows you to update the theme to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically right within the admin panel.
- Themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on web design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are typically quite affordable.
About Responsive WP Themes
Many WordPress theme developers are now developing WP themes that incorporate “responsive” functionality.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. laptops, tablets, smart phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and load your site on different device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser elements.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your web site works on all of your visitors’ devices, 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 this article has given you a clearer understanding of themes, what themes are, how they help you and your business save money, and how themes make customizing web sites easy.
To learn where to search for the best themes for your blog, see this page: Where To Find Great Free And Paid WordPress Templates On The Net.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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