Advanced web site publishing applications like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have truly simplified web design and web development for business users.
This is a great thing for businesses planning to run a digital presence that is relatively easy to manage.
Before “blogging” and the introduction of powerful content management systems, if you wanted a professional business site, you would have to wait until both the website development and web design processes were completely done. This process could mean weeks, even sometimes months of waiting for the work to be done!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this article, we look at what WP themes are, how themes can help you and your business save money on website development costs, and how WP themes let you easily customize your WP site.
Web Design Evolution
More businesses today have been benefiting from a tremendous revolution in web design that has been going for several years now. If you are a small business owner, you will want to know about this, because it can save you a lot of time and money on website development or web design costs.
Let’s briefly go over what used to happen before WordPress was developed:
First, you would meet with a web development company or website designer for a brief. After this, the “web design” itself had to be decided upon. This meant spending time and money with a professional web designer going over things of your site such as the, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be individually created with the elements and scripts coded into your page content. All pages were then assembled together into a web site using links and 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 worked how it was supposed to (and looking the way the client had imagined it to look), was the website considered to be finished and ready to go live.
Then, website “templates” were introduced”. Web site templates allow the ”look and feel” of the web site to be worked on separately from content on the page. Having templates helped to speed up the website creation process and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also allowed web site developers to expand their services to include small businesses and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses using “template-based” websites increased, templates were designed that provided a number of custom features and options, like colour palettes, the ability to specify different menu styles and styles, and so on.
As websites and web editor applications developed, web templates also started to evolve into web templating “systems” that permit users to customize their web site’s design components.
And then, a “blogging” application called WordPress came along and helped to kick off 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:
The WordPress Theme
WordPress themes push the concept of a website template system even further.
A WP theme controls the design areas of a website. It allows you to add a “skin” over your entire site much like a template system does but it also also provides you with complete control over the management, appearance and customization of all template options.
As WordPress has described in its 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 the above quote states, a unique and revolutionary feature of a WordPress theme is that the way your website appears to site visitors on the outside does not affect the management of your content.
In simple terms, what this means is that WordPress themes let you modify the look and feel of your website as much and as often as you like without affecting your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have set up your website for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the site. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because with 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 like, and change the entire look, feel and design of your website in seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without needing web code programming skills. Just pick a WP theme you want, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your website design and customize elements like headers, page layout, typography and more in less than a few minutes …
Because WordPress is distributed as open source software, hundreds of website designers can create themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP template system.
This means that thousands of great WP themes can be downloaded by WP users. WP are normally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE directory of WP themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of great web templates at no cost …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider audience of WordPress site owners.
Themes vary from minimal-looking, to designs that are simply stunning and could easily cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most premium themes can be purchased quite inexpensively, especially when you compare the price to what you would have had to pay if a website designer had to build it from scratch.
You can see several WordPress theme galleries that include stunning examples of themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional web design:
Ready To Start Using In No Time
WP themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin user area and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving community of commercial website designers and design companies who, collectively, contribute thousands of great-looking, high quality WordPress Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent look across all of your blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This makes it possible to change themes as often as you need without deleting the website’s settings.
- Many WordPress themes provide built-in features and settings that enable you to customize your site’s style and design elements to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that allows you to upgrade the theme to newer versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from within your admin panel.
- WordPress themes lets you save thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally quite inexpensive.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different platforms. Users can scroll, read and load the site on most devices without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional browser elements.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website will display correctly on your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards, practices and techniques of website design.
I hope that this article has given you a better understanding of themes, what WP themes are, how they help you and your business save money on web design costs, and how themes make it easy to customize a website.
In our next blog post on basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for the best WP themes for your website or blog.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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