Powerful web site management tools like WordPress have effectively improved web design and web development for website owners.
This greatly benefits businesses that want to own an online presence that they can fully manage themselves.
Before “blogging” and the introduction of sophisticated content management systems, if you needed a business website, you would have to wait until both the website development and web design processes were fully completed. This could take many weeks, sometimes even months!
The development of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, you will learn what themes are, how themes help you and your business save money, and how themes help you easily customize your WP site.
Web Site Design Evolution
Website owners will benefit from a great change in website design that started a number of years ago. If you are a small business owner, you will want to learn about this, because it can save your business a lot of time and money on website development or web design costs.
Very briefly, this is how things typically worked in “traditional” website design before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your requirements with a website developer or website designer. Then, the actual “web design” would be decided upon. This meant spending time and money with someone with web design skills going over areas of your web site like the, colors, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be hand-coded with all your design elements and scripts coded around your content. All the pages were then assembled into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and was performing how it was supposed to (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the site considered to be completed and ready for sign off.
The next phase in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “web templating elements”. A web template allows design elements of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. The development of ready-made templates helped speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also enabled web site development agencies to work with business clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses adopting “template-based” websites increased, templates were created that offered clients with expanding customizable settings, like the option to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and website building applications developed, web templates also began to evolve into web template ”systems”, enabling website owners to control the visual components of their web site.
Then, WordPress came along and helped to start a new online 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
WordPress themes expand the concept of a web template system one step further.
A WordPress theme controls the design areas of the web site. It allows you to add a “skin” to your entire site much like a web template system does but it gives you more control over the management and customization aspects of the template features.
As described 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 in the quote above, one of the unique and revolutionary features of the WordPress theme is that how your site displays to visitors on the outside is kept independent of the way your content is managed.
Basically, what this means is that a WP theme lets you modify the appearance of your website as much and as often as you like without touching your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have set up your site for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your business website built quickly and get started with any WordPress theme you want, and then modify the entire look, feel and design of your site in mere minutes, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site with no web code editing knowledge necessary. Simply choose a theme you want, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your web design and modify elements like header images, layout, styling options and more in less than a few minutes …
Since WordPress is made available as open source software, web design companies from all over the world 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 WP users. WP are generally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of excellent themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – Free WordPress Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now focused on developing themes for a wider range of uses.
WordPress themes vary from simple-looking, to dynamic designs that are simply spectacular and would typically cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most premium themes are really inexpensive to purchase.
You can see several WordPress theme galleries containing many examples of themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional web template design:
WordPress Theme Installation Is Easy
WordPress themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing community of professional theme developers and development companies who make thousands of quality WordPress Themes available to users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This allows you replace the “look and feel” of your templates as often as you want without affecting your site information.
- Many WordPress themes provide built-in functionality and options that allow you to customize your site’s style, layout and design properties and create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that lets you update the theme to newer versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically inside your admin panel.
- Themes allow users to save hundreds of dollars on web development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically very inexpensive.
Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many theme designers are now creating WP themes that incorporate “responsive” functionality.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and load the site on all device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to install additional display elements.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your web site will display correctly on all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards and practices of website design.
We hope this article has given you a good overview of themes, what WP themes are, how themes can help you save money, and how themes allow you to easily customize a site.
In the next blog post in our article WP beginners on basic WP features, we show you where to find great themes for your blog.
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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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