The development of advanced content publishing tools like WordPress has effectively improved web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This is a great thing for individuals or businesses planning to start an online presence that they can manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of easy-to-use CMS applications, if you wanted to build a web site built for your business, you would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This could mean weeks, sometimes even many months of waiting around!
The development of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this post, we explain what themes are, how WordPress themes save you money on web design costs, and how themes let you easily customize your site.
Web Design Evolution
Businesses have been benefiting from a tremendous change in website design that started several years ago. If you own a small business, you may want to learn more about this, because it can save your business a lot of time and money on web development and web design costs.
Let’s briefly review what typically took place before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your requirements with a web site development firm or designer. After that, the actual ”look and feel” of your web site would be discussed and agreed upon. This involved spending time with someone with website design skills going over design elements of the site like the, colours, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be hand-coded with your elements and codes inserted into your content. The pages were then assembled into a website using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and was functioning the way it should (and looking the way the client had imagined it to look), was the site considered to have been completed and ready for sign off.
The next stage in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “web templates”. Web site templates allow the ”look and feel” of the website to be created separately from the page content. Having templates helped make the process of building websites faster and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed web designers to work with businesses with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses started adopting “template-based” web design services, templates started being created to offer expanding custom settings, like colour palettes, the ability to pick different styles, formats, header, footer and navigation elements, layouts, and so on.
As web sites and website building tools developed, website templates also started evolving into website template “systems” that allow website owners to customize the visual aspects of a website.
And then, a “blogging” software called 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
A WordPress theme expands the concept of a website templating system much further.
The WordPress theme system controls every aspect of your website design. It lets you add a “skin” over your site in a similar way that a website template system does but it gives you complete control over the management, presentation and customization aspects of your template features.
As WordPress puts 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 stated in the quote above, one of the unique and revolutionary features of a WP theme is that the way your web site looks to visitors externally is kept independent of how your content is managed.
In simple terms, what this means is that WordPress themes let you modify the appearance of your site as much and as often as you like without modifying your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have configured WordPress site for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when your website is powered with WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your site to be done. You can get your website built simply and get started with any WP theme you want, and edit the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in mere seconds, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site without the need of website code editing skills. Just pick a WordPress theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and customize elements like headers, layout, styling options and more in less than a few minutes …
Because WordPress is open source software, hundreds of website designers can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes are made available to WP users. Themes are usually distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) WP themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE directory of WordPress themes which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of excellent WP themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider audience of web users.
WordPress themes vary from functional-looking, to jaw-dropping designs that are simply impressive and would easily cost thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, WP themes can be purchased fairly inexpensively, especially when compared to what it would have cost you if a website designer had to create it from scratch.
You can see a number of theme galleries containing various examples of great themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits And Advantages Of Using Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional website design:
WP Theme Installation Is Easy & Simple
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your admin user section and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing community of commercial website designers who, collectively, contribute thousands of great-looking, high quality WordPress Themes available to users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all your blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This makes it possible to swap themes as often as you want without disturbing the site’s data.
- Many themes provide built-in features and settings that allow you to customize the theme’s style and design properties and create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that lets users update the theme to newer versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically from the site’s administration interface.
- Themes lets you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically quite affordable.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many theme developers are now creating “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. laptops, iPads, mobile phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can scroll, read and load your site on various device platforms without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to install additional browser tools.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website will display correctly on your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards and practices of website design.
I hope that the above overview has helped you gain a better understanding about WP themes, what WordPress themes are, how themes can help you save money, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize your WordPress site.
In the next blog post on helping you understand features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to find great WP themes for your website.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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