Powerful content publishing technologies like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have effectively improved web design and web development for business owners.
This is great for business owners wanting a web presence that is relatively simple and easy to manage.
Before “blogging” and the introduction of sophisticated CMS tools, if you needed a website, you normally had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were fully completed. This could mean waiting around for many weeks, even months!
The introduction of WordPress themes changed all this. In this article, you will learn what themes are, how they save you money on website design costs, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize your site.
Web Design Revolution
Website owners will benefit from a revolutionary change in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a business, you may want to know more about this, because it can save your business thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s how things typically worked in “traditional” web design before CMS solutions like WordPress were introduced:
The first step would be to meet with a web development company or web designer for a brief. After this, the actual “web design” would be discussed and agreed upon. This required time being spent with a professional web site designer going over elements of the web site such as the layout, colors, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be individually created with all of your design elements and scripts coded around the content. All pages were then assembled into a web site using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files required to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and was performing how it was intended to (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the site considered to have been completed and ready to go live.
The next stage in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. A website template allows the ”look and feel” of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. The development of template elements helped speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also allowed web development firms to work with businesses with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of web development firms adopting “template-based” web design services increased, web templates started being designed to offer clients with a number of customizable features, such as color palettes, the ability to specify different styles and menu styles, and so on.
As websites and website building tools developed, website templates also began to evolve into web template “systems” that let users and web developers control their site’s design elements.
Then, WordPress was introduced and helped to kick off a new online publishing 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 drive website template systems much further.
A WordPress theme controls every aspect of your web site design. It allows you to add a “skin” over your site much like a template system does but it gives you more control over the management and customization aspects of the site’s template options.
As the official WordPress site explains it …
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, one of the unique and revolutionary features of the WordPress theme is that how your web site displays to visitors does not affect your site’s functional aspects (e.g. content management and functionality).
Basically, what this means is that a theme lets you modify the design of your site as often as you like without modifying your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if your website has been configured for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this important?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your business website built simply and start with any WordPress theme you want, and modify the entire look, feel and design of your site in a few seconds, whenever you choose … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WP site with no website code editing knowledge required. Simply choose a theme you like, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your web design and customize elements like header images, page layout, typography and more in less than a few minutes …
Since WordPress is distributed as open source software, commercial web design companies anywhere in the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WordPress themes are made available to WP users. WP are generally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great web templates at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider range of uses.
Themes vary from professional-looking, to elegant designs that are quite impressive and would typically cost many hundreds of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most themes are fairly inexpensive.
You can see a number of theme galleries containing various examples of themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Using WP Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over choosing traditional website design:
Quick And Easy Installation
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress site’s admin area.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing community of professional theme designers who contribute thousands of excellent WordPress Themes available to WP users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all your site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This makes it possible to change the “look and feel” of your templates as often as you like without disturbing the underlying content.
- Many themes come with additional functionality and settings that allow you to customize the theme’s layout and design elements and create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables you to upgrade themes to a newer theme version without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically within your site’s administration interface.
- Themes allow WP users to save hundreds of dollars on website design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically quite inexpensive.
Responsive WP Theme Design
Many WP theme developers are now developing themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and display a site on most if not all device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional themes.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your web site will work correctly across your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards of website design and web coding.
I hope the above article has provided you with a clearer overview of WordPress themes, what themes are, how themes help you and your business save money on web development costs, and how themes make customizing websites easy.
In the next article on helping you understand WP features, we show you where to search for great WP themes for your blog.
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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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