The introduction of flexible website management systems like the WordPress CMS platform has truly simplified web design and web development for web users.
This greatly benefits individuals or businesses thinking of starting a web presence that is simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of powerful and simple content management systems, if you needed to build a web site built 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, sometimes even many months!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, we explore what WP themes are, how they save you and your business money on web development costs, and how WordPress themes allow you to easily customize your WordPress site.
The Evolution Of Web Design
More businesses will benefit from a tremendous revolution in web design that has been going for many years now. If you are a small business owner, you may want to know about this, because it could save your business a lot of time and money on website development and website design costs.
Let’s review how things used to work in “traditional” web development before WordPress was developed:
First, you would discuss your project with a web site development firm or designer. After that, the ”look and feel” of your site itself had to be decided upon. This meant spending time and money with someone with website design skills going over design elements of your web site such as the, colours, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with the design elements and scripts coded into the content. All the pages were then assembled together into a website using hyperlinks 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 worked how it was intended to (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the site deemed as being completed and ready to go live.
The next stage in the evolution of business website design was the introduction of “web templating elements”. A web site template allows the presentation of the web site to be created separately from the page content. Having templates helped to make site development faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also allowed web site developers to expand their services to include business clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses adopting “template-based” web design services increased, web templates were designed that could provide clients with expanding customization features and options, like color palettes, the ability to specify different menu styles, formats, elements, page layouts, etc …
As websites and website editor tools developed, website templates also started to transform into website template ”systems”, which enabled users to control their website’s design aspects.
And then, WordPress came along and helped to start 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:
The WordPress Theme
WordPress themes drive web templating systems much further.
A WordPress theme controls and integrates all of the design aspects of your website. It lets you add a “skin” to your site similarly to what a template system does but it provides you with complete control over the management, appearance and customization of your site’s template options.
As per 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, one of the unique features of WordPress is that the way your web site appears to visitors on the outside in no way affects how your content is managed.
Basically, what this means is that a theme lets you modify the appearance of your website as often as you want without affecting your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if WP site has been configured 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 huge! Why?
Because when your website is built using WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your site’s web design is done. You can get your business website built simply and get started with any theme you want, and then modify the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in a few minutes, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site without needing any web code development skills. Just choose any WP theme you want, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and customize elements like headers, page layout, typography and more in less than a few minutes …
Since WordPress is distributed as open source software, commercial web designers from all over the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes are made available to WordPress users. Themes are generally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great website templates for free …
(WordPress.org – WP Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider range of users.
Themes vary from simple-looking, to designs that are beautiful and could easily cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most WP themes can be bought quite cheaply, especially when you compare the price to what it would have cost you if a web designer had to code it from scratch.
You can see a number of WordPress theme galleries that include stunning examples of themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over using traditional website design:
Very Easy To Install
WordPress themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP admin user login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes directory at WordPress.org) directly inside your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large online community of commercial website developers who make thousands of quality WordPress Themes available to WP users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all the blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This allows you change the “look and feel” of your website as often as you like without changing your blog’s underlying content.
- Many themes come with additional built-in features and options that enable you to customize the site’s style and design properties and create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that lets you upgrade themes to newer theme versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically directly from your site’s administration interface.
- WordPress themes allow users to save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically very inexpensive.
Responsive WordPress Themes
Many theme designers are now developing themes that incorporate “responsive” functionality.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. laptops, iPads, mobile phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different platforms. Users can navigate, read and display a site on most if not all device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to install additional themes.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will work correctly across your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards, practices and techniques of web design.
We hope that the above overview has helped you gain a clearer understanding about themes, what themes are, how WordPress themes can help your business save money on web design costs, and how WP themes let you easily customize your website.
In the next blog post in the article series for non-technical users on understanding basic WordPress features, we show you where to find great themes for your website.
***
"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com
***