The introduction of powerful web site publishing applications like the WordPress CMS has effectively improved web design and web development for users.
This is great for business owners wanting an online business presence that is simple and easy to manage.
Before blogging and the introduction of advanced CMS tools, if you wanted a business web site, you had to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This could mean waiting around for weeks, sometimes even many months!
WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, you will learn what themes are, how WP themes help your business save money, and how themes help you easily customize your website.
Evolution In Web Site Design
More businesses today are benefiting from a great change in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a business owner, you will want to know more about this, because it can save you a lot of time and money on web development and web design costs.
Let’s briefly review how things used to work in “traditional” web design before WordPress was developed:
The first step would be to meet with a website development company or web site designer for a brief. Next, the design itself had to be discussed and agreed upon. This required spending time and money with someone with web design skills going over things of the web site like the layout, colors, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be individually created with all of the elements and scripts coded around your content. All of the pages were then assembled 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 after everything passed testing and worked how it was supposed to (and looking the way a client had wanted it to look), was the website deemed to have been finished and ready to go live.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. A web site template allows the design of the website to be worked on separately from content on the page. The introduction of template elements helped speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed web site development companies to expand their services to include business clients and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses using “template-based” web design services increased, templates were created that offered various customizable settings, like the option to choose different colors, styles, layouts
As websites and web editing tools developed, website templates also began to evolve into web template ”systems”, letting website owners and web designers control the visual components of their web site.
Then, a “blogging” application called WordPress was introduced and helped to kick off a new web 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 expand the idea of a web templating system one step further.
A WP theme controls and integrates the design aspects of the website. It lets you add a “skin” to your site similarly to what a template system does but it also also gives you more control over the management and customization of template features.
As WordPress states 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 states, one of the unique features of a WP theme is that the way your site appears to visitors is kept independent of the way your website functions internally to handle areas like content management and functionality.
In plain English terms, what this means is that a WP theme lets you change the appearance of your website as often as you want without affecting your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have set up WordPress site for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be completed. You can get your business website built simply and start with any WP theme you want, and customize the entire look, feel and design of your site in minutes, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site with no web design skills necessary. Just pick any WordPress theme you want, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like header images, layout, style settings and more with just a couple of mouse clicks …
Since WordPress is open source software, website designers all around the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes are made available to WordPress users. Themes are normally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – WP Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
Themes range from corporate-looking, to fancy designs that are quite beautiful and would typically cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most WP themes can be bought very inexpensively, especially when compared to what you would have been charged if a web designer had to create it from scratch.
You can see several theme galleries containing various examples of great themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits And Advantages Of Using WordPress Themes
Here are just some of the benefits of choosing WordPress themes over using website building tools that require traditional website design:
Ready To Go To Work In No Time
WP themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress themes repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WordPress admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing online community of commercial website developers and development companies who make thousands of great WordPress Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all your blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This means you can change WordPress themes as often as you need without disturbing the blog data.
- Many WordPress themes come with built-in features and options that enable you to easily customize the theme’s style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows users to update themes to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from within the admin panel.
- Themes helps you save hundreds of dollars on website development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically quite affordable.
Responsive WP Themes
Many WordPress theme developers are now developing WP themes that incorporate “responsive” functionality.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can navigate, read and load your site on various device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser tools.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will display correctly on all of 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 of website design.
We hope this post has given you a clearer understanding of WordPress themes, what themes are, how themes help your business save money on website development costs, and how WordPress themes allow you to easily customize your website.
In the next article in the article WordPress newbies on understanding basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for great WordPress themes for your blog.
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