Advanced website management systems like WordPress have effectively improved web design and web development for business owners.
This greatly benefits non-technical users planning to start a website that is simple and easy to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of user-friendly CMS tools, if you needed to build 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 take weeks, sometimes even many months!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this blog post, we take a look at what themes are, how WordPress themes can help your business save money on website development costs, and how WordPress themes allow you to easily customize your site.
Web Site Design Revolution
More website owners today have been benefiting from a great change in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a small business owner, you will want to know about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on website development or web design costs.
Very briefly, here’s what happened before WordPress were introduced:
The first step would be to meet with a web developer or web site designer for a brief. After this, the actual design of your web site would be decided upon. This required time being spent with a professional web site designer discussing things of your site such as the layout, colours, styles, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your site then had to be hand-coded with your design elements and codes inserted into the page content. The pages were then assembled together into a web site using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files required to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and worked the way it should (and looking the way the client had imagined it to look), was the web site deemed to be completed and ready to go live.
The next stage in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. A web site template allows ”look and feel” elements of the website to be created separately from content on the page. Having template elements helped speed up the website development process and resulted in reduced production costs. This also enabled website developers and designers to work with business clients and clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of web site development firms choosing “template-based” web design services increased, templates were developed that could provide different customization features and options, such as the ability to switch colours, styles, layouts
As websites and website building applications evolved, web templates also started transforming into web templating “systems” that enable users and web designers to manage the design components of their website.
Then, a “blogging” application called WordPress came along 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:
WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme expands the concept of a web template system one step further.
The WP theme system controls every aspect of your website design. It lets you add a “skin” to your site similarly to what a template system does but it also also provides you with more control over the management, appearance and ability to customize the template options.
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 the above quote states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of a WordPress theme is that how your website appears to site visitors externally in no way affects the way your website functions internally to handle areas like content management and functionality.
Basically, what this means is that a WP theme lets you change the appearance of your website as often as you like without affecting your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have configured your site for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web 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 wait until your website’s design is 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 WordPress site in seconds, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WP site with no website coding knowledge necessary. Simply choose a theme you like, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your website design and customize elements like headers, layout, styling options and more in less than a few minutes …
Since WordPress is made available as open source software, website design companies can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP template system.
This means that loads of great WordPress themes are made available to WordPress users. Themes are usually distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE directory of WP themes which allows WordPress users to access thousands of great WordPress themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Free Theme Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider audience of web users.
WordPress themes vary from bare-looking, to designs that are quite spectacular and could typically cost thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, themes can be purchased quite inexpensively, especially when compared to what you would have had to pay if a website designer had to create it from scratch.
You can view several theme galleries containing various examples of great themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of choosing WordPress themes over using website development applications that require traditional web design:
Ready To Use In Very Little Time
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip folder that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large community of professional website developers who, collectively, make thousands of professional WP Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This means you can swap themes as often as you want without deleting your underlying content of your blog.
- Many WordPress themes come with additional built-in features and options that let you customize the site’s style and design properties and create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows users to update the theme to newer versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically directly from the admin panel.
- WP themes allow WordPress users to save thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally quite affordable.
Responsive WordPress Themes
Many theme designers are now creating themes that incorporate “responsive” design protocols.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different platforms. Users can navigate, read and display your site on various device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to install additional browser tools.
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 across all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards, practices and techniques of website design and coding.
We hope the above article has provided you with a clearer understanding of themes, what themes are, how WordPress themes can help your business save money on web development costs, and how themes make customizing sites easy.
To learn where to search for great themes for your website or blog, click here:
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