Advanced web publishing technologies like the WordPress CMS have truly simplified web design and web development for users.
This is a great thing for individuals or businesses planning to build a digital presence that they can fully manage themselves.
Prior to blogging and the development of easy-to-use CMS applications, if you wanted to build a web site for your business, you had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were completely done. This could mean waiting around for many weeks, sometimes even many months!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this article, you will learn what themes are, how WordPress themes save you money on web development costs, and how WP themes allow you to easily customize your website.
Web Site Design Evolution
More website owners today are benefiting from a great change in website design that started many years ago. If you are a small business owner, you will want to know about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s how things used to work in “traditional” web design before WordPress were introduced:
The first step would be to meet with a website developer or website designer for a brief. Then, the design would be decided upon. This involved time being spent with a professional web designer going over areas of your web site like the, colours, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be individually created with the design elements and scripts coded around the page content. The pages were then assembled together into a website using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your website work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and functioned how it was supposed to (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the site considered as being completed and ready to go live.
The next phase in the evolution of web design was the introduction of “web templates”. A web template allows the presentation of the web site to be created separately from content on the page. Having template elements helped to make the process of website development faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also allowed web site development agencies to work with business clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses choosing “template-based” web design services increased, web templates started being designed that could provide expanding customization features and options, like colour palettes, the ability to select different styles, formats, header, footer and navigation elements, page layouts, etc …
As web sites and website building software developed, web templates also began to transform into web template “systems” that let website owners manage the visual aspects of a site.
And then, a “blogging” software called WordPress came along and helped to start 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:
WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme pushes the concept of a web templating system much further.
A WP theme controls every aspect of your website design. It lets you add a “skin” over your site much like a web template system does but it provides users with complete control over the management, appearance and ability to customize template features.
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 stated above, a unique feature of a WordPress theme is that how your site displays to site visitors in no way affects the management of your content.
In plain English terms, what this means is that WordPress themes let you change the design of your website as often as you like without modifying your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if WP website has been set up for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, 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 site’s web design is done. You can get your business website built simply and get started with any theme you like, and then completely edit the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in a few seconds, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without requiring any web coding knowledge. Just pick any theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and modify elements like header images, layout, styling options and more in minutes …
Because WordPress is distributed as open source software, professional website designers can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of great WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. WordPress are usually distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of excellent WP themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Free WP Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider range of uses.
Themes vary from minimal-looking, to dynamic designs that are quite breathtaking and could normally cost many hundreds of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most themes are quite inexpensive.
You can view several WordPress theme galleries containing stunning examples of great premium themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just some of the many benefits of choosing WordPress themes over using traditional web template design:
Ready To Go To Work In Very Little Time
WordPress themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP theme repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WordPress site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving online community of commercial website developers and development companies who, collectively, contribute thousands of fantastic WordPress Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all of the blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This makes it possible to swap the “look and feel” of your templates as often as you want without changing the site content.
- Many themes come with built-in functionality and settings that allow you to easily customize your site’s layout, style and design properties to create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that lets users upgrade themes to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically within your dashboard.
- Themes allow WordPress users to save thousands of dollars on website development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically quite affordable.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many WP theme designers are now developing “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can scroll, read and display the site on various device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to install additional themes.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site displays well across all of your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards and practices of website design and coding.
We hope this post has provided you with a clearer understanding of WP themes, what themes are, how themes help you save money, and how themes make customizing websites easy.
In our next blog post on helping you understand features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for the best WP themes for your blog.
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