Flexible web management applications like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have effectively improved web design and web development for website owners.
This is great for individuals or businesses thinking of building a digital presence that is relatively simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of powerful content management systems, if you needed a professional site, you would have to wait until both the website development and web design processes were completely done. This could mean waiting around for many weeks, even months!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this blog post, you will learn what themes are, how they help your business save money, and how themes allow you to easily customize your WordPress site.
Evolution In Web Design
More website owners today are benefiting from an evolution in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a business owner, you will want to learn about this, because it could save your business thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s what happened before systems like WordPress were introduced:
The first step would be to discuss your requirements with a web developer or designer. After that, the ”look and feel” of the website itself would be decided upon. This involved spending time and money with someone with web site design skills going over things of the website like the layout, colours, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be hand-coded with all of the design elements and scripts coded around your content. All the pages were then assembled together into a web site using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files needed to make your website work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and functioned the way it should (and looking the way the client had wanted it to look), was the site considered to be finished and ready for sign off.
The next step in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “website templates”. A web template allows the presentation of the web site to be created separately from content on the page. The introduction of ready-made templates helped speed up the web development process and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed website development firms to expand their services to include business clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses began choosing “template-based” websites, web templates were introduced that could provide clients with expanding customization settings, such as the ability to choose different colors, styles, layouts
As websites and website editor applications developed, website templates also started evolving into web templating ”systems”, enabling users to customize their web site’s design elements.
Then, a “blogging” software called WordPress was developed and helped to kick off a new digital publishing 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 concept of a web templating system much further.
A WordPress theme controls and integrates every aspect of your website design. It lets you add a “skin” to your site in a similar way that a web template system does but it provides you with more control over the management, presentation and customization of 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 the above quote states, a unique and revolutionary feature of a WordPress theme is that how your website appears to visitors is controlled independently of how your site 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 much and as often as you like without affecting your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have configured WP website for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your web site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because when your site is built 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 quickly and start with any theme you like, and then change the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in seconds, whenever you choose … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without needing website code programming skills. Simply pick a WP theme you like, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and customize elements like header images, page layout, style settings and more in a few seconds …
Because WordPress is open source software, professional website designers anywhere in the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that loads of high quality WP themes are made available to WordPress users. Themes are usually distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE directory of WP themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of great themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Free Theme Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their digital presence, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider range of uses.
WP themes vary from professional-looking, to designs that are quite spectacular and could normally cost many hundreds of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most themes are fairly inexpensive to buy.
You can view a number of WordPress theme galleries containing many examples of great premium WP themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of WordPress Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over using traditional web design:
Very Easy To Install
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin user login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free WordPress theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving online community of professional web developers who make thousands of professional WP Themes available to users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent design across all of the site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This means you can swap WP themes as often as you want without deleting the site’s data.
- Many themes come with built-in features and options that allow you to easily customize the theme’s style, layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that allows users to update themes to newer theme versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically inside the site’s administration interface.
- WP themes allow WordPress users to save hundreds of dollars on web design costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally very inexpensive.
About Responsive WordPress Themes
Many theme developers are now creating “responsive” themes for the WordPress CMS.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. PCs, tablets, cell phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and load a site on most if not all devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional themes.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your web site will display correctly on your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards and practices of website design and coding.
I hope this article has given you a clearer overview of WordPress themes, what WordPress themes are, how they can help you and your business save money on web design costs, and how themes let you easily customize a web site.
In the next article on understanding basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to find great WordPress themes for your blog.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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