The introduction of website publishing tools like the WordPress CMS has effectively simplified web design and web development for anyone wanting a website.
This greatly benefits individuals or businesses that want a website that is relatively easy to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of easy-to-use content management systems, if you needed a professional business website, you had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This could take many weeks, even months!
The development of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this article, we look at what WordPress themes are, how they save you and your business money on website design costs, and how themes let you easily customize your site.
Website Design Revolution
Businesses will benefit from an evolution in website design that has been going for a number of years now. If you own a small business, you will want to know about this, because it could save your business a lot of time and money on website development and web design costs.
Let’s briefly take a look at what typically took place before WordPress were developed:
First, you would meet with a web development agency or designer for a brief. Next, the actual design itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This involved spending time and money with someone with web design skills going over areas of your website such as the, colors, formats, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be individually created with all of your elements and codes written into your page content. All of the pages were then assembled together into a web site using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files required to make your website work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and worked the way it was intended to (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the website considered to have been finished and ready for sign off.
The next step in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “web templates”. A website template allows presentation elements of the web site to be created separately from content on the page. The development of templates helped to make the process of site development faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also enabled web development agencies to work with small businesses with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses using “template-based” web design services increased, templates were introduced that offered clients with various customizable features and options, like colour palettes, the ability to pick different content styles, formats, elements, page layouts, etc …
As web sites and web editing tools developed, website templates also began evolving into website template “systems” that let website owners and website designers control their website’s visual elements.
Then, a “blogging” software called WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new content management 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
A WordPress theme takes website template systems much further.
A WordPress theme controls every aspect of your web site design. It allows you to add a “skin” over your site similarly to what a template system does but also provides you with complete control over the management and ability to customize template features.
As the official WordPress site states …
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 in the quote above, one of the unique features of the WordPress theme is that the way your web site looks to site visitors is a completely different system from the way your content is managed.
In simple terms, what this means is that a theme lets you change the appearance of your site as much and as often as you want without modifying your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if your site has been set up for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with another 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 your site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your web design to be done. You can get your business website built simply and start with any WP theme you want, and completely edit the look, feel and design of your website in a few seconds, whenever you choose … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site with no web code development knowledge necessary. Simply choose a WordPress theme you like, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your site’s design and customize elements like header images, page layout, style settings and more in minutes …
Since WordPress is open source software, web designers from all over 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. WP are normally 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 keeps a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent themes for free …
(WordPress.org – WP Themes Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
WP themes vary from simple-looking, to jaw-dropping designs that are quite stunning and could typically cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, WP themes are really inexpensive to purchase.
You can see several WordPress theme galleries that include stunning examples of themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Using WordPress Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing web development tools that require traditional website design:
Quick & Easy Installation
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your dashboard 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 thriving online community of professional web developers and development companies who contribute thousands of great-looking, high quality WordPress Themes available to users. Many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all of the site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This means you can replace the “look and feel” of your web site or blog as often as you like without deleting the settings.
- Many WP themes come with additional built-in functionality and options that allow you to easily customize your theme’s style, layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows you to update themes to newer theme versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically inside the admin panel.
- Themes lets you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on website development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically quite inexpensive.
About Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many WP theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically resize to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. PCs, tablets, smart phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different platforms. Users can scroll, read and load the site on different device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional browser elements.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your web site will work correctly across all of your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards of web design and coding.
We hope that the above article has provided you with a better overview of themes, what themes are, how themes can help your business save money on website development costs, and how themes make it easy to customize a web site.
In the next blog post on basic WP features, we show you where to find great WP themes for your website.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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