The development of flexible web management applications like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) has effectively improved web design and web development for business users.
This is fantastic news for non-technical users planning on getting an online business presence that they can fully manage by themselves.
Before blogging and the development of powerful CMS technologies, if you needed a professional business website, you would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This process could mean weeks, even months of waiting!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, you will learn what themes are, how themes can help you and your business save money, and how themes let you easily customize your site.
A New Development In Web Site Design
More website owners today will benefit from a tremendous revolution in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a small business owner, you may want to know about this, because it could save you a lot of time and money on web development and website design costs.
Let’s briefly review what happened before WordPress was introduced:
The first step would be to discuss your requirements with a website developer or designer. Next, the actual design had to be discussed and agreed upon. This required time and money being spent with someone with website design skills discussing design elements of your site such as the, colors, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be individually created with all the elements and codes written into your content. The pages were then assembled into a web site using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file required to make your website 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 the client had wanted it to look), was the site considered as being completed and ready to go live.
The next stage in the evolution of web design was the introduction of “web templates”. Website templates allow the presentation of the website to be created separately from content on the page. The development of templates helped to make web site development faster and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed website development agencies to work with small businesses and clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses started choosing “template-based” web design services, web templates started being designed that offered clients with various custom features and options, such as colour palettes, the ability to select different content styles, formats, header, footer and navigation elements, page layouts, and so on.
As web sites and website editing tools developed, website templates also started to transform into web templating ”systems”, which permitted website owners to control the design elements of a site.
And then, WordPress came along 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 pushes website templating systems one step further.
The WP theme system controls the design aspects of your web site. It allows you to add a “skin” to your entire site much like a template system does but also provides users with more control over the management and customization aspects of the site’s template settings.
As WordPress describes 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 the above quote states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of WordPress is that the way your web site looks to visitors externally is controlled independently of how your content is managed.
Basically, what this means is that you can change the look and feel of your website as much and as often as you want without affecting your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if your site has been set up for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your website’s design is done. You can get your business website built quickly and get started with any WP theme you want, and then completely customize the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in mere seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site with no web code editing skills necessary. Simply pick any WP theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and customize elements like header images, page layout, typography and more with just a few mouse clicks …
Because WordPress is open source software, website design companies can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP template system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes are made available to WP users. Themes are usually distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent WordPress themes for free …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider range of uses.
WP themes range from bare-looking, to stylish designs that are simply spectacular and would normally cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most WordPress themes can be bought fairly cheaply, especially when you compare the cost to what it would have cost you if a web designer had to develop it from scratch.
You can view a number of theme galleries containing stunning 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 using WordPress themes over choosing tools that require traditional web design:
Easy To Install
WordPress themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP admin user login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large community of commercial theme developers who, collectively, make thousands of professional WordPress Themes available to WP users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent design across all of your site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This allows you change WP themes as often as you need without changing your blog’s underlying information.
- Many themes provide additional built-in features and settings that let you customize the theme’s style, layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables you to update the theme to newer versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically inside your site’s administration interface.
- WP themes allow users to save hundreds of dollars on web design costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are typically very inexpensive.
About Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and display the site on most devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to install additional browser tools.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website 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 and practices of web design.
We hope this article has helped you gain a better understanding of themes, what WP themes are, how WP themes help you and your business save money, and how themes make it easy to customize your web site.
In our next blog post on basic WordPress features, we show you where to find great WP themes for your blog.
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