Powerful web publishing systems like the WordPress CMS have effectively simplified web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This greatly benefits businesses thinking of starting a website that they can fully manage.
Before blogging and the introduction of advanced CMS solutions, if you wanted a business site, you normally had to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This could mean weeks, even sometimes many months of waiting around!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, you will learn what themes are, how WP themes save your business money on website design costs, and how WP themes let you easily customize your site.
Evolution In Web Design
More businesses have benefited from a tremendous change in web design that started several years ago. If you are a business owner, you will want to learn about this, because it can save you thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.
Let’s briefly go over how things used to work in “traditional” website development before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a web developer or designer for a brief. Next, the actual “web design” had to be discussed and agreed upon. This involved spending time and money with someone with web design skills discussing things of the web site like the, colours, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your site then had to be hand-coded with all the design elements and codes written into the content. The pages were then assembled together into a website using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files needed to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and was functioning the way it was intended to (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the site considered to be completed and ready for sign off.
Then, web design “templates” were developed”. Web site templates allow design elements of the website to be created separately from content on the page. Having ready-made templates helped make the process of building web sites faster and resulted in lowered production costs. This also allowed web development companies to service business clients and clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses using “template-based” web design services increased, templates started being created that could offer various customizable features, such as the option to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As websites and website editor tools developed, website templates also began to transform into web template “systems” that let users and website developers manage their site’s design components.
And then, WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new 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:
About WordPress Themes
WordPress themes expand the concept of a web template system one step further.
The WordPress theme system controls and integrates the design elements of a website. It allows you to add a “skin” over your site much like a web template system does but it gives you complete control over the management, presentation and ability to customize all template settings.
As the official WordPress site explains 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 states, one of the unique features of WordPress is that the way your site appears to visitors is kept independent of how your site is configured internally to handle areas like content management and functionality.
In simple terms, what this means is that WordPress themes let you modify the design of your website as much and as often as you want without modifying your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have set up WP site for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your site’s web design is done. You can get your website built simply and get started with any theme you want, and change the entire look, feel and design of your website in minutes, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without requiring web code development skills. Just pick a WP theme you want, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your web design and modify elements like header images, layout, typography and more with just a few mouse clicks …
Because WordPress is made available as open source software, web design companies can design themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that thousands of great WP themes are made available to WordPress users. Themes are generally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Theme Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider range of uses.
WordPress themes vary from simple-looking, to designs that are simply spectacular and would easily cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most WP themes can be bought very inexpensively, especially when compared to what it would have cost you if a website designer had to code it from scratch.
You can see a number of WP theme galleries containing stunning examples of great themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional website design:
Easy To Install
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress site’s admin area.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing community of commercial theme developers who, collectively, contribute thousands of professional WP Themes available to users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all the blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This makes it possible to swap the “look and feel” of your web site or blog as often as you want without modifying the blog content.
- Many WP themes provide additional functionality and settings that allow you to easily customize the site’s layout, style and design properties and create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows you to upgrade the theme to newer versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically right inside the dashboard.
- WP themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on website design costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally very inexpensive.
Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many WordPress theme designers are now creating WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” web design.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically resize to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different types of devices. Users can navigate, read and load a site on various device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional display elements.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will display correctly on all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards and practices of web design coding.
Hopefully, the above article has provided you with a better overview of themes, what themes are, how themes can help you and your business save money, and how themes make customizing your web design easy.
In the next article on helping you understand WP features, we show you where to search for great WordPress themes for your website or 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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