Flexible website management systems like WordPress have truly improved web design and web development for website owners.
This is great news for individuals or businesses planning to start a website that is simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Prior to blogging and the introduction of user-friendly CMS applications, if you needed to get a site for your business, you had to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This process could mean waiting for many weeks, even many months!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this article, you will learn what WP themes are, how themes save your business money on web design costs, and how WP themes help you easily customize your site.
The Evolution Of Web Design
More website owners are benefiting from an evolution in web design that has been going for a number of years now. If you own a business, you may want to know about this, because it can save you a lot of time and money on web development or web design costs.
Very briefly, this is what happened before CMS software like WordPress were developed:
The first step would be to discuss your project with a web development firm or web designer. Next, the design itself would be decided upon. This involved time being spent with someone with website design skills discussing areas of your website such as the, colors, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be hand-coded with your elements and scripts coded into the page content. All pages were then assembled together into a web site using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and was working how it was intended to (and looking the way the client had wanted it to look), was the website deemed as being completed and ready for sign off.
Then, website “templates” came along”. Web templates allow the ”look and feel” of the website to be created separately from the page content. Having template elements helped speed up the process of developing web sites and resulted in lowered production costs. This also enabled web site development companies to expand their services to include small businesses with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web development companies began using “template-based” websites, templates were introduced that provided clients with expanding customizable features and options, such as the option to switch colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and website building applications evolved, web templates also began evolving into web templating “systems” that let users customize the visual aspects of a site.
Then, WordPress came along and helped to start a new digital publishing 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 drives the concept of a website template system one step further.
A WordPress theme controls all of the design elements of your web site. It lets you add a “skin” to your entire site much like a web template system does but also provides you with more control over the management, appearance and customization aspects of template options.
As explained 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 stated above, a unique and revolutionary feature of a WordPress theme is that the way your web site looks to site visitors is kept independent of how your content is managed.
In simple terms, what this means is that a WP theme lets you change the appearance of your website as much and as often as you want without touching your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if your site has been configured for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when your website is powered with WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your website design to be done. You can get your business website built quickly and get started with any theme you like, and then change the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in mere minutes, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site without needing web design knowledge. Just choose any WordPress theme you want, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your site’s design and customize elements like headers, layout, typography and more in less than a few minutes …
Since WordPress is made available as open source software, thousands of web design companies can design themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP template system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes are made available to WP users. WP are usually distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE directory of WordPress themes which allows WordPress users to access thousands of excellent website templates for free …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Theme Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider audience of WordPress site owners.
Themes range from bare-looking, to elegant designs that are simply beautiful and could normally cost thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most themes are fairly inexpensive.
You can view several WordPress theme galleries containing various examples of WordPress themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits And Advantages Of Themes
Here are just some of the many benefits of choosing WordPress themes over choosing traditional website design:
Fast Installation
WordPress themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your administrator section and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WordPress site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing online community of professional theme designers who, collectively, contribute thousands of great-looking, high quality WP Themes available to users. Many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all the blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This makes it possible to swap the “look and feel” of your templates as often as you like without changing your underlying content of your web site.
- Many themes provide additional features and settings that allow you to easily customize your theme’s style, layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that allows users to upgrade the theme to a newer theme version without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically inside the dashboard.
- Themes lets you save thousands of dollars on website development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically very inexpensive.
About Responsive WP Themes
Many theme developers are now creating “responsive” themes for the WP CMS platform.
A responsive theme enables a website 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 types of devices. Users can navigate, read and display the site on all device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional display elements.
Note: When purchasing 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 on all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards and practices of web design.
We hope that the above article has provided you with a good understanding of WordPress themes, what WP themes are, how WordPress themes can help you and your business save money, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize your website.
To learn where to find great WordPress themes for your website, click here:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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