The introduction of web site publishing tools like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) has truly simplified web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This is a great thing for entrepreneurial-minded people wanting a website that is simple and easy to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of powerful content management systems, if you needed a professional site, you normally would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This process could mean weeks, even sometimes many months of waiting!
The introduction of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, we will explore what themes are, how themes help you and your business save money on website design costs, and how WordPress themes let you easily customize your WP site.
Web Site Design Revolution
More website owners will benefit from a revolution in web design that has been going for a number of years now. If you are a small business owner, you may want to learn about this, because it can save your business a lot of time and money on web development or web design costs.
Let’s go over how things used to work in “traditional” website design before a CMS software like WordPress was developed:
First, you would meet with a website developer or web site designer for a brief. Next, the “web design” itself would be decided upon. This required spending time with a professional web site designer going over areas of your website like the, colors, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be hand-coded with all of your design elements and codes scripted into your content. The pages were then assembled together into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and functioned how it was intended to (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the site considered as being completed and ready for sign off.
The next stage in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “website templates”. Web templates allow the design of the web site to be created separately from the page content. Having templates helped speed up the web site development process and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also enabled website developers to service small businesses with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses began choosing “template-based” websites, web templates started being introduced that offered clients with expanding customizable options, like the ability to switch colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and website building tools developed, website templates also started transforming into web template “systems” that let users customize the design elements of a site.
Then, WordPress came along and helped to start a new online 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:
About WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme takes website template systems even further.
The WP theme system controls the design elements of the web site. It lets you add a “skin” to your site in a similar way that a template system does but it also also gives you complete control over the management and customization of template options.
As per the official WordPress site …
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, a unique feature of WordPress is that how your site looks to visitors is an entirely separate system from the way your content is managed.
Basically, what this means is that you can modify the appearance of your site as often as you like without modifying your site’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 website. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your website’s design is done. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any WordPress theme you want, and then completely change the look, feel and design of your site in a few seconds, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WP site with no website code editing skills necessary. Just pick any theme you like, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your entire site’s web design and customize elements like headers, page layout, typography and more in less than a few minutes …
Since WordPress is distributed as open source software, web designers from all over the world can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of great WordPress themes can be downloaded by WP users. Themes are generally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent WordPress themes for free …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focused on developing themes for a wider audience of web users.
Themes range from minimal-looking, to stylish designs that are simply stunning and could easily cost thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most themes can be bought fairly inexpensively, especially when compared to what it would have cost you if a website designer had to build it from scratch.
You can view several WP theme galleries containing stunning examples of great WordPress themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of WP Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits of choosing WordPress themes over using traditional web template design:
Ready To Start Using In Minutes
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress administrator section and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free WordPress theme directory at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing community of commercial web developers and development companies who make thousands of great-looking, high quality WordPress Themes available to WP users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This allows you swap WordPress themes as often as you want without disturbing the underlying content.
- Many WP themes provide built-in features and options that enable you to easily customize your site’s layout, style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that allows users to update themes to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from within the dashboard.
- WP themes allow WordPress users to save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally very inexpensive.
Responsive WordPress Themes
Many theme developers are now creating themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different platforms. Users can scroll, read and load the site on various device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional display elements.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will work correctly on all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards and practices of website design coding.
We hope this article has given you a clearer understanding of WordPress themes, what themes are, how they help you save money on web development costs, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize a website.
In the next article on understanding basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to find the best WordPress themes for your blog.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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