Advanced website publishing technologies like the WordPress CMS have effectively improved web design and web development for anyone wanting a website.
This is a great thing for businesses thinking of building a website that is relatively simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Prior to blogging and the development of powerful CMS software, if you needed to get a professional website built for your business, you would have to wait until both the website development and web design processes were completely done. This process could take weeks, sometimes even many months!
WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, you will learn what themes are, how they can help you and your business save money on web development costs, and how WordPress themes allow you to easily customize your WP site.
Evolution In Web Design
More businesses are benefiting from a revolutionary change in website design that has been going for many years now. If you are a business owner, you may want to know about this, because it can save you thousands of dollars on web development or web design costs.
In a nutshell, this is what happened before WordPress came along:
First, you would meet with a website developer or designer for a brief. After that, the design itself would be decided upon. This involved time and money being spent with a professional web designer discussing things of your website like the, colors, formats, graphic elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be hand-coded with the elements and codes written into the content. All pages were then assembled together into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files needed to make your website work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and functioned the way it was supposed to (and looking the way the client had wanted it to look), was the web site considered to be finished and ready to go live.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. Web site templates allow the presentation of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. The development of ready-made templates helped to speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also enabled web development firms to work with smaller business clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses started choosing “template-based” web design services, templates started being created that provided various customizable settings, such as the option to choose different colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and website building applications developed, website templates also started evolving into website template ”systems”, permitting website owners to customize the design aspects of a website.
Then, a “blogging” application called WordPress was introduced 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:
The WordPress Theme
WordPress themes drive web templating systems one step further.
The WP theme system controls all of the design areas of your web site. It lets you add a “skin” over your entire site similarly to what a template system does but it gives you more control over the management, appearance and customization of your template options.
As explained 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 above, a unique and revolutionary feature of a WP theme is that the way your site looks to visitors on the outside is a separate system from the way your website works in the backend to handle areas like content management and functionality.
Basically, what this means is that a theme lets you modify the design of your site as often as you want without affecting your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if WordPress website has been configured for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. 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 site is powered by WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be done. You can get your business website built quickly and get started with any theme you like, and completely customize the look, feel and design of your website in minutes, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WP site without having website coding knowledge. Just pick a WP theme you like, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your web design and customize elements like header images, layout, typography and more in a few seconds …
Since WordPress is open source software, thousands of web design companies anywhere in the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes are made available to WordPress users. Themes are usually distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE directory of WordPress themes which allows WordPress users to access thousands of excellent website templates for free …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
WordPress themes vary from bare-looking, to fancy designs that are spectacular and could typically cost many hundreds of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most premium themes are very inexpensive.
You can view a number of WordPress theme galleries that include stunning examples of themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WP Themes – Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over using traditional web template design:
Ready To Use In Minutes
Themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your admin user section and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large community of professional theme developers who make thousands of professional WordPress Themes available to WP users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all of the blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This makes it possible to replace the “look and feel” of your web site as often as you want without disturbing your blog settings.
- Many WP themes come with additional built-in features and options that let you customize your site’s style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables users to update themes to newer theme versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically inside your dashboard.
- Themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on website design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically very affordable.
About Responsive WP Theme Design
Many WP theme designers are now developing “responsive” themes for the WP CMS.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. laptops, tablets, cell phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can scroll, read and display the site on most device platforms without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser tools.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will work correctly on all 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 and web coding.
We hope the above overview has given you a better understanding of WP themes, what WP themes are, how they can help your business save money on website design costs, and how WordPress themes allow you to easily customize your web site.
To learn where to find great WP themes for your website, click here:
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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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