Powerful website publishing platforms like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have truly simplified web design and web development for business owners.
This greatly benefits individuals or businesses planning to start a web presence that they can manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of powerful and simple content management systems, if you needed to get a website built for your business, you had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were fully completed. This could mean weeks, even many months of waiting around!
The development of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this blog post, we look at what WordPress themes are, how they save your business money on website development costs, and how themes help you easily customize your site.
A Revolution In Website Design
More businesses are benefiting from a change in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a business, you may want to know about this, because it can save you a lot of time and money on web development and website design costs.
Let’s briefly take a look at how things used to work in “traditional” website design before a CMS application like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a website development company or web site designer for a brief. Next, the “web design” would be decided upon. This involved spending time and money with a professional website designer discussing design elements of your site such as the layout, colours, styles, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be individually created with all of your design elements and scripts coded into your content. All of the pages were then assembled together into a website using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files required to make your website work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and functioned the way it was intended to (and looking the way a client had imagined it to look), was the site considered to be completed and ready to go live.
Then, website “templates” came along”. A web template allows the ”look and feel” of the website to be created separately from content on the page. The development of ready-made templates helped to speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in lowered production costs. This also allowed web site designers to service smaller businesses with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses adopting “template-based” web design services increased, web templates started being designed that could provide various customization features and options, like the ability to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As websites and website building software evolved, website templates also began to transform into website templating “systems” that permitted website owners to customize the visual components of their website.
And then, WordPress was developed 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:
The WordPress Theme
WordPress themes take the idea of a website template system even further.
A WordPress theme controls and integrates every aspect of your website design. It allows you to add a “skin” to your entire site in a similar way that a website template system does but it also also gives you complete control over the management, appearance and ability to customize the template options.
As the official WordPress site describes 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 features of WordPress is that how your web site looks to site visitors externally is kept independent of the management of your content.
In plain English terms, what this means is that you can change the appearance of your website as often as you want without modifying your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have configured your website for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your website’s design is done. You can get your business website built simply and get started with any theme you like, and then edit the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in minutes, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site with no website code development skills necessary. Simply pick a theme you like, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like header images, layout, styling options and more with just a few mouse clicks …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, commercial website design companies can design themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes are made available to WordPress users. Themes are generally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE directory of WP themes 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 focusing on developing themes for a wider range of applications.
Themes range from functional-looking, to jaw-dropping designs that are simply stunning and would typically cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most premium WP themes can be purchased very inexpensively, especially when you compare the price to what it would have cost you if a website designer had to build it from scratch.
You can view a number of WordPress theme galleries that include various examples of great premium WP themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional website design:
Ready To Start Using In No Time
WP themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip folder that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving community of commercial web developers and development companies who, collectively, make thousands of excellent WordPress Themes available to WP users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all the blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This makes it possible to replace WordPress themes as often as you want without modifying your blog data.
- Many themes provide additional functionality and options that let you easily customize your theme’s layout, style and design properties and create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets users upgrade themes to newer versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically inside the dashboard.
- WordPress themes lets you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally very inexpensive.
Responsive Themes
Many theme developers are now developing “responsive” WP themes.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically resize to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each platform. Users can scroll, read and load a site on different devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser tools.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site displays well across all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards of web design and web coding.
We hope this post has helped you gain a clearer understanding of WordPress themes, what themes are, how they can help your business save money, and how WP themes make customizing sites easy.
In the next article in our article series on basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to find great WordPress themes for your website or blog.
***
"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
***