Flexible web management tools like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have truly improved web design and web development for anyone wanting a website.
This is great for business owners thinking about building a digital presence that is relatively simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Prior to blogging and the development of advanced CMS software, if you wanted to build a web site for your business, you normally would have to wait until both the website development and website design processes were completely done. This could take many weeks, even many months!
WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, we explain what themes are, how they help you save money, and how WP themes let you easily customize your website.
A Revolution In Web Site Design
More website owners today have been benefiting from a tremendous revolution in web design that started a number of years ago. If you own a business, you may want to know about this, because it can save you thousands of dollars on website development or website design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s how things typically worked in “traditional” website development before solutions like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a web development firm or website designer for a brief. After that, the “web design” itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This involved time and money being spent with someone with web design skills going over areas of the site like the layout, colours, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your site then had to be individually created with all of your design elements and codes written into the content. The pages were then assembled into a web site using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file needed to make your website work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and performed the way it was supposed to (and looking the way a client had wanted it to look), was the web site considered as being completed and ready to go live.
The next phase in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “web templates”. Web site templates allow the ”look and feel” of the website to be created separately from the page content. Having ready-made templates helped to make developing websites faster and resulted in lowered production costs. This also allowed web site development companies to expand their services to include smaller businesses with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses started choosing “template-based” websites, templates were introduced to provide a range of customization features, such as color palettes, the ability to specify different menu styles or elements, etc …
As web sites and website building software developed, website templates also started to evolve into website template ”systems”, letting website owners and website developers control their website’s design components.
And then, WordPress was developed 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:
WordPress Themes
WordPress themes drive the idea of a website templating system one step further.
A WordPress theme controls the design elements of the web site. It lets you add a “skin” over your site similarly to what a website template system does but it gives you more control over the management and ability to customize the site’s template options.
As the official WordPress site explains …
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, a unique feature of WordPress is that how your web site appears to site visitors in no way affects how your content is managed.
Basically, what this means is that WP themes let you change the appearance of your website as often as you like without modifying your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if your website has been set up for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your web site. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when your website is built with WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be done. You can get your website built quickly and start with any theme you want, and change the entire look, feel and design of your site in mere minutes, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site with no website code programming skills necessary. Just choose any WordPress theme you want, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and modify elements like header images, page layout, typography and more in a few seconds …
Because WordPress is distributed as open source software, commercial website designers can create themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes are made available to WP users. WP are usually distributed freely under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE directory of WordPress themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent WordPress themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Theme Directory)
As more businesses 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 minimal-looking, to fancy designs that are visually beautiful and would typically cost many hundreds of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most premium themes are quite inexpensive.
You can view a number of theme galleries containing various examples of great premium themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WP Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over using traditional web template design:
Ready To Start Using In No Time
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing community of commercial web developers and development companies who make thousands of professional WP Themes available to WordPress users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all the site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This means you can change themes as often as you need without affecting the site’s information.
- Many WP themes come with built-in functionality and settings that let you easily customize your theme’s style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that enables users to upgrade the theme to newer versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically inside your admin panel.
- Themes helps you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally very affordable.
About Responsive WP Theme Design
Many WordPress theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can scroll, read and load a site on all device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to install additional browser elements.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site displays well on your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards, practices and techniques of website design.
Hopefully, this article has given you a good overview of WordPress themes, what themes are, how themes help your business save money, and how WP themes make customizing websites easy.
In the next article on basic WP features, we show you where to search for the best WP themes for your website.
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