Advanced website publishing technologies like WordPress have effectively improved web design and web development for business users.
This is a great thing for entrepreneurial-minded people thinking about starting a website that is easy to manage.
Prior to blogging and the development of advanced content management systems, if you needed a business website, you typically would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This could mean weeks, sometimes even many months of waiting for the work to be done!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this article, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how themes help you and your business save money on website development costs, and how themes make it easy to customize your site.
A New Development In Web Design
More businesses have been benefiting from a great change in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a small business, you will want to know more about this, because it could save your business a lot of time and money on website development or web design costs.
Let’s briefly go over how things used to work in “traditional” web development before WordPress came along:
First, you would discuss your requirements with a web developer or website designer. Then, the actual ”look and feel” of your website would be decided upon. This meant time being spent with someone with website design skills discussing areas of the website such as the layout, colours, formats, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be individually created with the design elements and scripts coded around your page content. All pages were then assembled into a website using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and worked how it was supposed to (and looking the way the client had wanted it to look), was the website considered to be completed and ready for delivery.
The next step in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “website templates”. A website template allows presentation elements of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. The introduction of ready-made templates helped to speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in lowered production costs. This also allowed website developers to service businesses and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses choosing “template-based” web design services increased, web templates were introduced to provide various customization settings, such as color palettes, the ability to specify different layouts and styles, and so on.
As web sites and web building software developed, website templates also began to evolve into website templating “systems” that allow website owners and website designers to manage their site’s design components.
And then, a “blogging” software called WordPress came along and helped to kick off 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 take the idea of a website templating system much further.
The WordPress theme system controls the design areas of a web site. It lets you add a “skin” over your entire site much like a web template system does but it also also gives you complete control over the management, presentation and customization of all template settings.
As WordPress explains in its 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, one of the unique features of a WP theme is that the way your web site appears to site visitors is managed independently of how your content is managed.
In simple terms, what this means is that you can modify the look and feel of your website as much and as often as you like without touching your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have configured WordPress site for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because with WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be completed. You can get your website built simply and get started with any theme you want, and then edit the entire look, feel and design of your website in a few minutes, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site with no website design knowledge required. Just choose any WP theme you want, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and modify elements like headers, layout, style settings and more in minutes …
Because WordPress is distributed as open source software, web design companies from all over the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that loads of great WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. WP are generally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of excellent themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider audience of web users.
WordPress themes vary from simple-looking, to designs that are visually stunning and would normally cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most premium WordPress themes can be purchased fairly inexpensively, especially when compared to what you would have been charged if a web designer had to build it from scratch.
You can see several WP theme galleries that include stunning examples of great themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of choosing WordPress themes over using applications that require traditional website design:
WordPress Theme Installation Is Easy
WP themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WP administrator section and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free WP theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving online community of professional website developers and development companies who contribute thousands of quality WordPress Themes available to users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all the blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This allows you swap WP themes as often as you like without changing your blog settings.
- Many themes come with additional built-in features and settings that let you easily customize your theme’s layout, style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables you to update themes to a newer theme version without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically right within the dashboard.
- Themes lets you save thousands of dollars on web design costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally quite affordable.
Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many WP theme designers are now creating “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically resize to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. computers, tablets, cell phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different platforms. Users can scroll, read and load a site on a range of devices without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional browser tools.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website works on all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards and practices of website design and coding.
We hope this post has provided you with a better overview of themes, what themes are, how themes help your business save money on web design costs, and how WP themes make customizing your web design easy.
To learn where to search for the best WP themes for your website, see this post: Finding Great Free And Paid 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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