Flexible web publishing platforms like the WordPress CMS platform have truly simplified web design and web development for business users.
This greatly benefits business owners planning to start a website that is easy to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of powerful CMS applications, if you needed to get a web site for your business, you normally would have to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This could mean waiting for many weeks, even many months!
The development of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, you will learn what themes are, how themes can help your business save money, and how WP themes let you easily customize your WordPress site.
The Evolution Of Web Design
More website owners have been benefiting from a great change in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a business, you may want to learn more about this, because it can save your business thousands of dollars on website development and web design costs.
Let’s briefly take a look at what happened before CMS software like WordPress were developed:
First, you would meet with a web development company or website designer for a brief. After this, the “web design” itself had to be decided upon. This required time and money being spent with a professional website designer going over things of your site such as the, colours, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be hand-coded with all the design elements and codes inserted into your page content. All pages were then assembled into a web site using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files required to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and was working the way it was intended to (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the site considered to have been finished and ready for sign off.
Then, website “templates” were developed”. A web template allows the presentation of the web site to be created separately from the page content. The development of template elements helped to make the process of creating web sites faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also allowed website development firms to service smaller business clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more website development agencies started using “template-based” web design services, web templates started being developed to provide various customization settings, like the option to switch colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and web building software developed, website templates also began to evolve into website templating ”systems”, which allowed users to customize their web site’s visual components.
And then, a “blogging” software called WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new business 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 expand the concept of a website templating system one step further.
A WordPress theme controls every aspect of your web site design. It allows you to add a “skin” to your entire site much like a website template system does but also gives you more control over the management, presentation and ability to customize all template features.
As WordPress has described 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 stated above, one of the unique features of a WordPress theme is that the way your web site displays to visitors in no way affects your site’s functional aspects (e.g. content management and functionality).
In simple terms, what this means is that a WP theme lets you change the look and feel of your site as much and as often as you want without touching your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have set up your website for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the site. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this great news for businesses?
Because when your site is powered with WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your website’s design is done. You can get your website built simply and start with any WordPress theme you want, and completely modify the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in mere seconds, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site with no website code programming skills required. Simply choose any theme you want, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your site’s design and modify elements like header images, layout, styling options and more in less than a few minutes …
Since WordPress is open source software, professional web design companies anywhere in the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that thousands of high quality WordPress themes can be downloaded by WP users. WordPress are usually distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to access thousands of excellent themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – Themes 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.
Themes range from professional-looking, to designs that are quite beautiful and could typically cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most premium themes can be purchased quite cheaply, especially when compared to what you would have had to pay if a web designer had to code it from scratch.
You can see a number of WordPress theme galleries containing stunning examples of great premium themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits & Advantages Of Using Themes
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over choosing traditional web design:
Quick And Easy Installation
WordPress themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme directory at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving community of professional theme designers and design companies who make thousands of high quality WP Themes available to users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all of your blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This means you can change themes as often as you need without deleting your underlying content of your website.
- Many themes come with built-in functionality and options that enable you to easily customize your site’s style, layout and design properties and create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets you update themes to a newer theme version without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically inside the admin panel.
- Themes lets you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally very inexpensive.
Responsive Theme Design
Many WP theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes for the WordPress CMS.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically resize to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. PCs, iPads, smart phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different platforms. Users can navigate, read and load a site on a range of device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser elements.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your web site displays well on all devices, 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 coding.
We hope that this basic overview has helped you gain a better understanding of themes, what themes are, how WordPress themes can help your business save money, and how WordPress themes allow you to easily customize your web site.
To learn where to search for great WordPress themes for your blog, go here:
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