Advanced web site management applications like WordPress have truly improved web design and web development for anyone wanting a website.
This is great news for non-technical users planning to start an online business presence that they can easily manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of sophisticated CMS technologies, if you needed to build a web site built for your business, you normally had to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This process could mean waiting around for weeks, even months!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, we take a look at what WordPress themes are, how WP themes can help you save money, and how WP themes help you easily customize your WordPress site.
Web Design Revolution
More website owners today are benefiting from a tremendous revolution in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a small business owner, you may want to learn more about this, because it can save your business thousands of dollars on web development or web design costs.
Let’s take a look at how things typically worked in “traditional” website development before solution like WordPress was introduced:
The first step would be to meet with a website developer or web designer for a brief. Then, the actual “web design” had to be decided upon. This meant spending time and money with someone with web site design skills discussing things of your site like the, colours, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be individually created with the elements and scripts coded into your page content. The pages were then assembled together into a web site using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and functioned the way it was intended to (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the web site considered as being completed and ready for sign off.
Then, website “templates” came along”. Website templates allow design elements of the web site to be created separately from content on the page. The development of template elements helped make developing web sites faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also allowed web developers and designers to expand their services to include small businesses and clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses began choosing “template-based” websites, templates started being created that offered clients with various customization features, such as colour palettes, the ability to specify different menu styles and page layouts, and so on.
As websites and web editor software evolved, web templates also began to transform into website templating “systems” that allowed users to manage the visual components of a website.
And then, a “blogging” software called WordPress was introduced and helped to start a new web revolution …
(WordPress – A Content Publishing Revolution)
To learn more about content management systems and the benefits of the WordPress CMS, see the tutorial below:
About WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme expands web templating systems one step further.
A WP theme controls every aspect of your website design. It allows you to add a “skin” over your entire site in a similar way that a website template system does but it gives you more control over the management and customization aspects of all template settings.
As WordPress explains 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 the above states, a unique feature of WordPress is that how your web site looks to visitors in no way affects the management of your content.
Basically, what this means is that WordPress themes let you modify the design 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 WP site has been set up for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with another 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 the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when your site is powered with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your website built simply and get started with any WordPress theme you want, and completely change the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in mere seconds, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site with no website code programming knowledge necessary. Simply choose a theme you want, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your site’s design and customize elements like headers, page layout, style settings and more in minutes …
Since WordPress is open source software, website design companies can design themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. WordPress are normally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE directory of WP themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of great WordPress themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider range of uses.
Themes range from corporate-looking, to designs that are spectacular and could typically cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most themes are very inexpensive.
You can see a number of WordPress theme galleries containing various examples of WP themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of choosing WordPress themes over choosing web building tools that require traditional web design:
Easy Installation
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing online community of professional theme designers who make thousands of great WordPress Themes available to WordPress users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all of your site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This makes it possible to swap themes as often as you need without changing your underlying content of your website.
- Many WP themes come with additional built-in features and settings that allow you to customize the site’s layout and design elements and create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that allows you to upgrade themes to newer theme versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from within the admin panel.
- Themes lets you save thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally quite affordable.
Responsive Theme Design
Many WP theme developers are now creating “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. computers, tablets, smart phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different types of devices. Users can navigate, read and display a site on various device platforms without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional themes.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website displays well on all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards and practices of web design and web coding.
I hope this overview has helped you gain a better understanding of themes, what themes are, how they can help you and your business save money on web design costs, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize a WP site.
In the next article on understanding basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for the best themes for your website or blog.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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