Flexible web management applications like the WordPress CMS platform have truly simplified web design and web development for non-technical web users.
This greatly benefits non-technical users wanting an online business presence that is easy to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of easy-to-use CMS technologies, if you wanted a professional web site, you had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were fully completed. This process could mean waiting around for weeks, sometimes even months!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this blog post, we take a look at what themes are, how themes can help you save money on web development costs, and how WordPress themes help you easily customize your WP site.
A Revolution In Web Design
Businesses will benefit from a revolution in website design that has been going for several years now. If you are a small business owner, you may want to learn more about this, because it could save you a lot of time and money on web development or website design costs.
Let’s briefly review what happened before software like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a website development agency or designer for a brief. After this, the ”look and feel” of the site had to be decided upon. This required spending time and money with someone with web design skills going over areas of the website like the layout, colours, styles, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be individually created with all your design elements and scripts coded into your content. The pages were then assembled together into a web site using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files required to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and was performing the way it was intended to (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the web site deemed to have been completed and ready for delivery.
The next phase in the evolution of web design was the introduction of “web templating elements”. A web site template allows presentation elements of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. The introduction of template elements helped make building websites faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also allowed web designers to expand their services to include smaller businesses with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses started adopting “template-based” websites, web templates started being developed that offered clients with various customization options, such as the option to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and web building software developed, website templates also started to evolve into website templating “systems” that let website owners customize the design components of their website.
Then, 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:
About WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme takes the concept of a web template system one step further.
A WP theme controls every aspect of your web design. It allows you to add a “skin” over your entire site similarly to what a template system does but it also also gives you complete control over the management and customization of 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 stated above, one of the unique and revolutionary features of WordPress is that the way your site appears to site visitors is managed separately from your site’s content management settings.
In simple terms, what this means is that you can modify the design of your website as much and as often as you want without touching your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if WordPress site has been set up for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your website. All e-commerce features, plugin 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 need to wait until your website’s design is done. You can get your business website built simply and start with any WP theme you like, and then change the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in mere minutes, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without the need of web code editing knowledge. Just choose any WordPress theme you want, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your site’s design and modify elements like header images, page layout, styling options and more with just a few mouse clicks …
Because WordPress is made available as open source software, website designers all around the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes are made available to WordPress users. Themes are usually distributed freely under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great WP themes completely free of charge …
(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 audience of web users.
Themes range from bare-looking, to designs that are visually impressive and would typically cost thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most premium themes can be purchased quite inexpensively, especially when you compare the cost to what you would have been charged if a website designer had to create it from scratch.
You can view a number of WP theme galleries containing many examples of WP themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits & Advantages Of Using Themes
Here are just some of the benefits of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional web template design:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your administrator area and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing community of commercial theme designers and design companies who contribute thousands of professional WordPress Themes available to WordPress users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all of the site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, 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 disturbing the settings.
- Many WordPress themes provide built-in functionality and settings that enable you to easily customize the site’s style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that enables users to update themes to a newer theme version without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from within your dashboard.
- Themes allow users to save hundreds of dollars on web development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically quite affordable.
About Responsive WP Theme Design
Many theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. PCs, tablets, smart phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and display the site on various device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional browser tools.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website displays well on all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards, practices and techniques of website design coding.
Hopefully, this post has given you a clearer overview of WordPress themes, what themes are, how WordPress themes can help your business save money, and how WordPress themes allow you to easily customize a web site.
In the next blog post in the article WordPress newbies on understanding basic WordPress features, we show you where to find great 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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