Flexible content publishing systems like WordPress have effectively simplified web design and web development for users.
This greatly benefits individuals or businesses wanting a web presence that they can fully manage.
Prior to blogging and the development of easy-to-use CMS tools, if you needed a professional site, you had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were completely done. This process could take many weeks, sometimes even many months!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this post, you will learn what themes are, how WordPress themes save your business money on website design costs, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize your website.
The Evolution Of Web Design
More website owners today will benefit from a great change in website design that started several years ago. If you are a small business owner, you will want to learn more about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on website development or web design costs.
Let’s briefly review what used to happen before CMS software like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a website development agency or website designer for a brief. Next, the design had to be decided upon. This required spending time with someone with web design skills going over design elements of your site like the layout, colors, styles, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all your elements and codes scripted into your page content. The pages were then assembled into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file 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 should (and looking the way the client had imagined it to look), was the website deemed as being completed and ready to go live.
The next stage in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “web templating elements”. A web site template allows the design of the website to be created separately from the page content. The development of template elements helped to make website creation faster and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed web site development firms to work with smaller business clients and clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of website development companies adopting “template-based” websites increased, templates were created to offer a range of customization features and options, like the option to switch colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and web editor software developed, website templates also started evolving into web template “systems” that let users manage the design aspects of a site.
Then, a “blogging” application called 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:
The WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme drives the idea of a web template system even further.
A WordPress theme controls and unifies all of the design areas of the web site. It lets you add a “skin” over your site similarly to what a template system does but also provides you with more control over the management, appearance and customization aspects of all template options.
According to 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 and revolutionary feature of WordPress is that how your site looks to site visitors on the outside is controlled separately from your site’s functionality and content management.
In simple terms, what this means is that themes let you modify the look and feel of your website as much and as often as you like without touching your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have configured your website for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the site. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this great news for business owners?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your business website built simply and get started with any WordPress theme you want, and then edit the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in a few seconds, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without having website code editing knowledge. Simply pick a WP theme you want, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and modify elements like headers, layout, styling options and more in minutes …
Since WordPress is made available as open source software, website designers all around the world can design themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP template system.
This means that thousands of great WordPress themes are made available to WP users. Themes are normally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – WP Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
WP themes range from minimal-looking, to dynamic designs that are quite breathtaking and could easily cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to design. Surprisingly, WP themes can be purchased fairly inexpensively, especially when compared to what you would have had to pay if a website designer had to build it from scratch.
You can view a number of WP theme galleries that include stunning examples of themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Using Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing tools that require traditional website design:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
WP themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip folder containing the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your WP admin user account and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving community of professional theme designers who make thousands of high quality WordPress Themes available to users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent design across all of your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This means you can swap the “look and feel” of your web site or blog as often as you like without affecting your settings.
- Many WordPress themes come with additional built-in features and settings that let you easily customize your site’s style, layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows users to update themes to newer versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically right within your site’s administration interface.
- Themes helps you save thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically quite affordable.
About Responsive WP Theme Design
Many WordPress theme developers are now creating WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different platforms. Users can scroll, read and display a site on various device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional browser tools.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website 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 of website design and coding.
We hope the above article has helped you gain a clearer understanding of themes, what WordPress themes are, how they help your business save money on web development costs, and how WP themes make it easy to customize your website.
In the next blog post in the article WordPress newbies on helping you understand features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for the best themes for your website.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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