The introduction of advanced web management applications like the WordPress CMS has effectively improved web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This is a great thing for entrepreneurial-minded people planning to run a website that they can fully manage themselves.
Before blogging and the introduction of powerful and simple CMS applications, if you needed a web site, you had to wait until both the website development and web design processes were fully completed. This process could mean weeks, even sometimes many months of waiting around!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, we explore what themes are, how themes help you save money, and how themes allow you to easily customize your website.
Web Design Revolution
Businesses, especially small businesses, will benefit from a great change in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a small business owner, you will want to learn about this, because it could save you a lot of time and money on website development or web design costs.
In a nutshell, this is how things worked in “traditional” website design before WordPress came along:
First, you would discuss your requirements with a web development company or website designer. After this, the “web design” had to be decided upon. This required spending time and money with someone with web design skills discussing areas of the website like the, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be hand-coded 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 after everything passed testing and functioned how it was intended to (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the website considered as being finished and ready for delivery.
The next stage in the evolution of business website design was the introduction of “web templates”. Web templates allow the ”look and feel” of the website to be worked on separately from the page content. Having template elements helped to speed up the website creation process and resulted in lowered production costs. This also allowed website development companies to work with businesses and clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses using “template-based” web design services increased, web templates were developed that provided clients with expanding customization settings, like the ability to switch colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and website building applications developed, web templates also began transforming into website template ”systems”, letting website owners customize the design aspects of a web site.
Then, a “blogging” application 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:
The WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme takes web templating systems further.
A WordPress theme controls every aspect of your web site design. It lets you add a “skin” to your site in a similar way that a web template system does but it also also provides you with more control over the management, presentation and ability to customize all template options.
As the official WordPress site explains …
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 WordPress is that how your site looks to visitors on the outside is managed separately from the management of your content.
Basically, what this means is that you can change the design of your website as often as you want without affecting your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if your site has been configured for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your site to be done. You can get your business website built quickly and get started with any WP theme you like, and completely edit the 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 without needing any website code editing skills. Simply pick a WP theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and customize elements like header images, page layout, style settings and more in a few seconds …
Because WordPress is made available as open source software, commercial website designers can create themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP template system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes are made available to WP users. WordPress are generally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focused on developing themes for a wider audience of WordPress site owners.
Themes range from functional-looking, to jaw-dropping designs that are simply spectacular and would typically cost thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most premium themes are quite inexpensive to purchase.
You can see a number of WordPress theme galleries containing stunning examples of great WordPress themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits & Advantages
Here are just some of the benefits of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional web design:
Installation Is Easy, Quick & Simple
Themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving community of professional web designers who, collectively, make thousands of high quality WordPress Themes available to WP users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent look across all your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This allows you swap the “look and feel” of your web site as often as you need without modifying your site’s underlying information.
- Many WP themes come with additional built-in features and settings that let you easily customize the theme’s style, layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that allows you to update themes to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically right within your dashboard.
- WP themes allow WP users to save thousands of dollars on web design costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically quite inexpensive.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many theme designers are now developing WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” design protocols.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically resize to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can scroll, read and load the site on most if not all device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional browser elements.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website displays well across your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards, practices and techniques of web design.
We hope that this basic overview has given you a better understanding about WordPress themes, what WordPress themes are, how WordPress themes help you save money on website development costs, and how themes make customizing your web design easy.
In the next article on basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for great WP themes for your blog.
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