Advanced web site publishing tools like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have effectively simplified web design and web development for business owners.
This is a great thing for business owners that want to own an online business presence that is simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Before “blogging” and the introduction of easy-to-use content management systems, if you needed a professional site, you would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This could mean waiting around for many weeks, even many months!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this article, you will learn what themes are, how they save your business money on website design costs, and how WordPress themes allow you to easily customize your WordPress site.
Web Site Design Revolution
More website owners today are benefiting from an evolution in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a small business, you may want to know more about this, because it can save your business a lot of time and money on website development and website design costs.
Let’s review what happened before tools like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your project with a web site developer or web designer. Next, the actual “web design” itself would be decided upon. This required time being spent with a professional website designer discussing things of your site such as the layout, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with the elements and codes written into your page content. All of the pages were then assembled into a website using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and performed the way it was intended to (and looking the way a client had wanted it to look), was the website deemed as being completed and ready to go live.
The next phase in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. Web site templates allow ”look and feel” elements of the web site to be created separately from content on the page. Having template elements helped speed up the web creation process and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also allowed web site development firms to service small businesses and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more website development firms started using “template-based” web design services, templates were introduced to offer expanding custom settings, such as colour palettes, the ability to pick different page layouts or header, footer and navigation elements, and so on.
As web sites and website editing software evolved, website templates also began evolving into website templating “systems” that enable users to control the visual elements of a site.
And then, a “blogging” application called WordPress came along and helped to kick off 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:
The WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme expands web templating systems one step further.
The WP theme system controls and integrates every aspect of your site’s design. It lets you add a “skin” over your entire site much like a template system does but it also also gives you complete control over the management, appearance and ability to customize the site’s template features.
According to 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 feature of a WordPress theme is that how your web site looks to site visitors externally in no way affects how your content is managed.
In plain English terms, what this means is that WordPress themes let you modify the appearance of your site as often as you like without touching your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if WordPress site 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 intact, but your site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your website built simply and start with any theme you like, and then customize the entire look, feel and design of your website in mere minutes, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site with no web coding skills required. Just pick any WP theme you want, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like header images, page layout, styling options and more with just a few mouse clicks …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, professional website designers can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP template system.
This means that loads of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. WordPress are generally distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of great WordPress themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Free WP Theme Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider range of uses.
WP themes range from bare-looking, to designs that are simply breathtaking and could easily cost many hundreds of dollars to design. Surprisingly, themes are fairly inexpensive to buy.
You can view several WordPress theme galleries containing stunning examples of themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just a few of the benefits of choosing WordPress themes over choosing web building applications that require traditional web design:
Easy Installation
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin user login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free theme repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing online community of professional website designers and design companies who, collectively, contribute thousands of professional WP Themes available to users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all of your site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This makes it possible to swap the “look and feel” of your site as often as you want without disturbing the underlying content.
- Many themes come with built-in functionality and options that enable you to easily customize the site’s layout and design elements and create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows users to update 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 your site’s administration interface.
- WordPress themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on web design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically quite inexpensive.
Responsive Themes
Many theme designers are now developing “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. computers, iPads, smart phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different types of devices. Users can navigate, read and display a site on different device platforms without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional browser tools.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website will work correctly across your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards of website design coding.
We hope this article has provided you with a better overview of themes, what themes are, how themes help your business save money, and how themes make customizing web sites easy.
To learn where to search for great WP themes for your website, visit this page: Finding Great Paid And Free Responsive WordPress Themes On The Net.
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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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