Advanced content management systems like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have effectively improved web design and web development for non-technical business owners.
This greatly benefits business owners planning to start or build a website that they can easily manage by themselves.
Before blogging and the development of powerful and effective CMS solutions, if you needed a professional business site, you would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This process could take weeks, even months!
WordPress themes changed all this. In this article, we take a look at what WordPress themes are, how themes help you save money, and how WordPress themes let you easily customize your WordPress site.
A Revolution In Website Design
More businesses today will benefit from a revolution in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a business, you may want to learn about this, because it could save you a lot of time and money on website development and web design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s how things worked in “traditional” website development before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your requirements with a web site developer or designer. Next, the design itself had to be decided upon. This involved spending time with a professional web designer discussing elements of your website like the, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your site then had to be hand-coded with your elements and codes written into your content. All pages were then assembled into a website using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files needed to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and worked the way it was intended to (and looking the way the client had wanted it to look), was the web site deemed to be completed and ready for delivery.
The next phase in the evolution of business website design was the introduction of “website templates”. A web site template allows presentation elements of the web site to be created separately from content on the page. Having ready-made templates helped to make the process of developing web sites faster and resulted in lowered production costs. This also enabled web development firms to service smaller businesses with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses adopting “template-based” web design services increased, web templates started being designed that provided various customization settings, such as the ability to switch colours, styles, layouts
As websites and web editing software developed, web templates also began to transform into website templating ”systems”, letting users and website developers customize their site’s visual components.
And then, a “blogging” software called WordPress was developed and helped to start a new 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 improve website template systems further.
The WordPress theme system controls and integrates every aspect of your website design. It allows you to add a “skin” over your entire site much like a template system does but it provides users with more control over the management and ability to customize template options.
As WordPress has explained in its official web 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 features of WordPress is that the way your web site appears to site visitors externally does not affect the way your content is managed.
Basically, what this means is that you can modify the design of your website as often as you like without affecting your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have configured WordPress website for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your web site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be done. You can get your website built quickly and start with any WP theme you like, and completely change the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in mere minutes, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site with no website coding skills necessary. Just choose any theme you want, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and customize elements like headers, layout, style settings and more in less than a few minutes …
Since WordPress is open source software, website design companies can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP template system.
This means that thousands of high quality WordPress themes can be downloaded by WP users. Themes are normally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of great WP themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
WP themes vary from simple-looking, to elegant designs that are quite stunning and would normally cost many hundreds of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, WP themes can be bought quite inexpensively, especially when compared to what you would have had to pay if a website designer had to build it from scratch.
You can see a number of theme galleries containing many examples of great themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits & Advantages Of Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over choosing applications that require traditional web design:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
WP themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WP admin account and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress site’s admin area.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing online community of commercial theme designers and design companies who, collectively, contribute thousands of great-looking, high quality WordPress Themes available to users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all your site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This allows you swap WordPress themes as often as you need without deleting your underlying content.
- Many themes come with built-in functionality and settings that allow you to customize your site’s style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows users to upgrade the theme to newer theme versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from the dashboard.
- WordPress themes helps you save hundreds of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically quite inexpensive.
About Responsive WP Themes
Many theme developers are now creating “responsive” themes for the WordPress CMS.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and display a site on various devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to have installed additional themes.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website displays well on all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards and practices of website design and coding.
We hope that the above article has given you a clearer understanding of themes, what themes are, how themes help you and your business save money on website development costs, and how WP themes let you easily customize a website.
To learn where to find the best WordPress themes for your website, see this post: Where To Search For The Best Paid And Free WordPress Templates For Your Business Web Site Or Blog.
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