The introduction of web publishing systems like WordPress has effectively simplified web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This greatly benefits business owners planning to start a website that they can manage by themselves.
Before blogging and the development of powerful CMS applications, if you wanted to get a professional site built for your business, you typically would have to wait until both the web 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 have changed all this. In this post, we explore what themes are, how WordPress themes help you and your business save money, and how themes let you easily customize your website.
Web Design Revolution
Website owners will benefit from a revolution in web design that started a number of years ago. If you own a business, you may want to learn about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on web development or website design costs.
Very briefly, here’s how things typically worked in “traditional” web development before tools like WordPress were developed:
First, you would meet with a web developer or designer for a brief. After that, the actual ”look and feel” of your website itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This required spending time and money with a professional web designer going over areas of your website such as the layout, colors, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be individually created with all of the elements and codes written into the content. The pages were then assembled into a website 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, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and was functioning the way it was supposed to (and looking the way a client had wanted it to look), was the website considered to have been completed and ready for sign off.
The next step in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “website templates”. A web template allows the presentation of the website to be created separately from the page content. Having templates helped speed up the web development process and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also enabled website development firms to service small business clients and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web site development companies began choosing “template-based” web design services, templates were designed that could provide clients with various customization features, like color palettes, the ability to select different content styles or styles, etc …
As web sites and website editing software evolved, web templates also started evolving into web templating ”systems”, enabling users and website designers to customize the visual aspects of a website.
Then, WordPress came along and helped to start a new content management 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 improve the concept of a website templating system much further.
A WP theme controls every aspect of your site’s design. It lets you add a “skin” to your entire site much like a web template system does but it provides users with complete control over the management, appearance and customization of template options.
As the official WordPress site states …
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 a WordPress theme is that how your website looks to site visitors is kept independent of your site’s functional aspects (e.g. content management and functionality).
In plain English terms, what this means is that you can modify the look and feel of your site as much and as often as you like without modifying your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built 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 your site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your website design to be done. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any theme you like, and then completely edit the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in minutes, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site with no web design skills required. Simply choose a theme you want, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like headers, layout, typography and more in minutes …
As WordPress is open source software, thousands of website design companies can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes are made available to WP users. Themes are generally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great WordPress themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – WP Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider audience of WordPress site owners.
WP themes vary from minimal-looking, to designs that are quite beautiful and could normally cost thousands of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most WP themes can be bought quite cheaply, especially when you compare the cost to what you would have had to pay if a website designer had to build it from scratch.
You can view several WP theme galleries that include many examples of great premium themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WP Themes – Benefits & Advantages
Here are just some of the benefits of using WordPress themes over choosing applications that require traditional website design:
Really Easy To Install
Themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip file containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WP dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing community of commercial theme designers and design companies who contribute thousands of great WP Themes available to users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent look across all of the blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This means you can replace themes as often as you like without affecting your site information.
- Many themes provide built-in features and options that allow you to customize your theme’s layout, style and design elements to create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows you to update themes to a newer theme version without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically directly from within your admin panel.
- Themes helps you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are typically very affordable.
Responsive Theme Design
Many WP theme designers are now creating themes that incorporate “responsive” web design.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and load your site on most if not all device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional display elements.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website works across your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards and practices of web design and coding.
Hopefully, this article has provided you with a better understanding of WordPress themes, what themes are, how WP themes help your business save money, and how WordPress themes make customizing websites easy.
In the next blog post on basic WordPress features, we show you where to search for great themes for your blog.
***
"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
***