Flexible content management technologies like the WordPress CMS have effectively improved web design and web development for website owners.
This greatly benefits entrepreneurial-minded people that want a website that they can fully manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of powerful content management systems, if you wanted a business website, you typically had to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This process could mean weeks, even sometimes months of waiting!
The introduction of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this post, you will learn what WP themes are, how themes save you and your business money on web design costs, and how themes allow you to easily customize your website.
Web Site Design Revolution
Businesses are benefiting from a tremendous change in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a small business, you may want to learn about this, because it can save you thousands of dollars on website development and web design costs.
Let’s briefly go over how things typically worked in “traditional” web development before software like WordPress was introduced:
First, you would meet with a web developer or designer for a brief. Next, the ”look and feel” of your web site would be discussed and agreed upon. This meant time and money being spent with someone with website design skills discussing areas of the web site like the, colors, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be hand-coded with all of your design elements and scripts coded into the page content. The pages were then assembled into a website using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file required to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and worked how it was supposed to (and looking the way a client had wanted it to look), was the web site considered to have been finished and ready to go live.
The next stage in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “web templating elements”. Web site templates allow design elements of the website to be worked on separately from the page content. The development of template elements helped to speed up the process of developing web sites and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed web development companies to expand their services to include business clients and clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses started using “template-based” web design services, templates were created that provided different customization features and options, like the ability to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and web editing tools developed, web templates also started transforming into website templating “systems” that let website owners control their web site’s visual aspects.
Then, a “blogging” tool called WordPress came along and helped to kick off 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:
The WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme takes website template systems even further.
The WP theme system controls and integrates the design aspects of the web site. It lets you add a “skin” to your site in a similar way that a template system does but also provides users with more control over the management, appearance and customization of all template settings.
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 a WP theme is that how your website appears to site visitors is managed independently of the management of your content.
Basically, what this means is that you can modify the look and feel of your site as much and as often as you want without affecting your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if your site has been configured for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your website. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any theme you want, and completely modify the look, feel and design of your site in mere minutes, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site without requiring any web code programming knowledge. Simply pick a WordPress theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your website design and customize elements like headers, layout, typography and more in less than a few minutes …
Because WordPress is distributed as open source software, website designers can create themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes are made available to WordPress users. WordPress are normally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to access thousands of excellent themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their content online, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider audience of web users.
Themes range from professional-looking, to dynamic designs that are simply beautiful and could easily cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most premium themes can be bought quite cheaply, especially when compared to what you would have had to pay if a web designer had to develop it from scratch.
You can see a number of theme galleries that include various examples of great WP themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits & Advantages
Here are just some of the many benefits of choosing WordPress themes over using tools that require traditional web design:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
WordPress themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free theme repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving online community of commercial theme developers who make thousands of excellent WP Themes available to users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent design across all of the site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This means you can replace the “look and feel” of your website as often as you need without deleting the blog data.
- Many themes provide additional built-in functionality and options that enable you to customize your theme’s layout and design properties and create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that lets users upgrade themes to newer versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from within your site’s administration interface.
- Themes lets you save thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically quite inexpensive.
Responsive Themes
Many theme developers are now developing themes that incorporate “responsive” functionality.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and load your site on most if not all device platforms without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to have installed additional browser elements.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site displays well across 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 web design coding.
I hope that this article has given you a better understanding of themes, what themes are, how themes help your business save money, and how themes make customizing web sites easy.
In our next article on understanding basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to find the best WP themes for your blog.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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