The development of web site management platforms like the WordPress CMS platform has effectively improved web design and web development for users.
This greatly benefits businesses thinking of building a website that they can fully manage by themselves.
Before blogging and the introduction of powerful CMS applications, if you needed to build a web site built for your business, you normally had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were completely done. This could mean waiting around for many weeks, even months!
The development of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this blog post, we look at what themes are, how WordPress themes help you and your business save money on website development costs, and how themes help you easily customize your WordPress site.
Web Design Revolution
More businesses have been benefiting from a change in web design that started many years ago. If you are a small business owner, you may want to learn more about this, because it could save your business thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
Let’s briefly review how things worked in “traditional” website development before a CMS tool like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your requirements with a web site developer or web designer. Then, the design itself had to be discussed and agreed upon. This involved time and money being spent with a professional web site designer going over things of the website like the, colors, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your site then had to be hand-coded with the design elements and scripts coded around the content. The pages were then assembled together into a web site using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file required to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and performed how it was intended to (and looking the way a client had wanted it to look), was the web site considered to have been completed and ready for sign off.
The next step in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. A web site template allows presentation elements of the web site to be created separately from the page content. Having ready-made templates helped make the process of site development faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also allowed web development companies to expand their services to include smaller businesses and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses choosing “template-based” websites increased, web templates started being developed that could provide clients with a number of customizable settings, such as colour palettes, the ability to specify different formats and layouts, etc …
As web sites and website editing tools developed, website templates also started evolving into website templating “systems” that let website owners customize their website’s visual elements.
And then, WordPress was developed and helped to start 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:
WordPress Themes
WordPress themes push the idea of a website template system further.
The WordPress theme system controls all of the design elements of a website. It lets you add a “skin” over your entire site similarly to what a template system does but also provides users with more control over the management, appearance and customization aspects of all template settings.
As the official WordPress site explains …
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 feature of the WordPress theme is that the way your web site displays to site visitors externally is controlled separately from your site’s functionality and content management.
Basically, what this means is that a theme lets you modify the design of your website as often as you like without affecting your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if your 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, settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when your site is built using WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your site to be done. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any theme you want, and then completely customize the look, feel and design of your site in minutes, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WP site with no web coding knowledge required. Simply pick a theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your website design and customize elements like headers, layout, styling options and more in a few seconds …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, web designers all around the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that loads of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are generally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
Themes range from simple-looking, to exciting designs that are beautiful and would normally cost many hundreds of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most premium WordPress themes are fairly inexpensive.
You can see a number of theme galleries that include various examples of great premium WP themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Themes
Here are just some of the benefits of using WordPress themes over using tools that require traditional web template design:
Installation Is Easy And Simple
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your WP dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WP dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large community of commercial theme developers who, collectively, make thousands of great-looking, high quality WP Themes available to users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all of your site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This makes it possible to replace themes as often as you need without affecting your settings.
- Many WordPress themes come with built-in functionality and options that allow you to easily customize the theme’s layout, style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that lets you upgrade the theme to a newer theme version without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from the admin panel.
- WordPress themes allow WordPress users to save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are typically very affordable.
Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many WordPress theme designers are now developing “responsive” WordPress themes.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. laptops, iPads, mobile phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different platforms. Users can scroll, read and display your site on a range of device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to have installed additional browser tools.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your web site works on your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards, practices and techniques of website design and coding.
We hope the above overview has given you a clearer understanding of WordPress themes, what themes are, how WP themes can help you save money, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize your WP site.
To learn where to find the best WP themes for your website, visit this post: Where To Get Great Free And Premium Responsive WordPress Templates On The Net.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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