The development of powerful website publishing applications like the WordPress CMS platform has effectively simplified web design and web development for non-technical business owners.
This greatly benefits business owners that want a website that they can easily manage.
Prior to blogging and the introduction of user-friendly content management systems, if you wanted a professional business website, you normally would have to wait until both the website development and web design processes were completely done. This process could mean weeks, even months of waiting!
The introduction of WordPress themes changed all this. In this blog post, we will explore what themes are, how themes save you money on web design costs, and how themes make it easy to customize your site.
Web Design Revolution
Businesses, especially small businesses, will benefit from an evolution in web design that has been going for several years now. If you are a business owner, you will want to know about this, because it could save your business a lot of time and money on website development and website design costs.
Very briefly, this is what normally took place before WordPress were developed:
The first step would be to discuss your project with a web developer or designer. Then, the actual “web design” had to be decided upon. This required time being spent with someone with web design skills discussing things of the website like the, colours, formats, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all your design elements and scripts coded into the content. The pages were then assembled together into a website using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file needed to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and worked how it was intended to (and looking how the client had wanted it to look), was the site deemed to have been finished and ready for delivery.
The next step in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “web templates”. Website templates allow the ”look and feel” of the website to be worked on separately from the page content. Having template elements helped to speed up the process of developing web sites and resulted in lowered production costs. This also enabled web development companies to expand their services to include smaller business clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses began using “template-based” web design services, web templates were introduced to offer clients with different customization options, like the ability to switch colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and web editing applications evolved, website templates also began to evolve into web templating “systems” that enabled users to control their web site’s visual elements.
Then, a “blogging” software called WordPress came along 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
WordPress themes push web templating systems even further.
The WordPress theme system controls and integrates all of the design areas of your website. It lets you add a “skin” over your entire site in a similar way that a template system does but it also also provides users with complete control over the management, presentation and ability to customize all template options.
As WordPress has described 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 the above quote states, a unique feature of WordPress is that the way your web site appears to site visitors on the outside is a separate system from how your content is managed.
Basically, what this means is that a theme lets you modify the appearance of your website as much and as often as you like without affecting your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if WordPress site 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 your site. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because when your site is powered by WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your site to be completed. You can get your website built simply and get started with any theme you want, and completely change the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in mere minutes, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site with no website design knowledge necessary. Simply choose any theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your web design and customize elements like headers, page layout, style settings and more with just a couple of mouse clicks …
As WordPress is made available as open source software, hundreds of website designers can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP template system.
This means that loads of high quality WP themes are made available to WordPress users. WordPress are generally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WP themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great themes for free …
(WordPress.org – WP Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider range of applications.
Themes range from bare-looking, to stylish designs that are quite impressive and would easily cost thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most WordPress themes can be purchased fairly inexpensively, especially when compared to what you would have been charged if a website designer had to create it from scratch.
You can view several theme galleries containing many examples of great WordPress themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits And Advantages Of Using Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over choosing website development tools that require traditional website design:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
WordPress themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your admin account and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing community of professional theme developers and development companies who, collectively, make thousands of professional WordPress Themes available to users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This allows you swap WordPress themes as often as you want without deleting the underlying content.
- Many themes provide built-in functionality and options that enable you to easily customize the site’s style, layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows users to update the theme to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically directly from within the admin panel.
- Themes lets you save thousands of dollars on website development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are typically very inexpensive.
About Responsive Themes
Many WP theme developers are now creating “responsive” themes for the WordPress platform.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. PCs, iPads, cell phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and display your site on most devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to install additional browser tools.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website will work correctly across all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards of web design coding.
We hope this post has given you a clearer understanding of themes, what WP themes are, how they help you and your business save money on web design costs, and how WordPress themes make customizing sites easy.
To learn where to search for great WP themes for your website, click here:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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