The development of content management systems like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) has effectively simplified web design and web development for website owners.
This greatly benefits entrepreneurial-minded people that want to own a website that is relatively easy to manage.
Before blogging and the development of easy-to-use CMS tools, if you wanted a professional web site, you had to wait until both the website development and web design processes were fully completed. This process could mean weeks, sometimes even many months of waiting for the work to be done!
The introduction of WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, we explore what themes are, how WP themes save your business money on website development costs, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize your website.
Website Design Evolution
More website owners today have benefited from a tremendous change in web design that started several years ago. If you are a business owner, you may want to know more about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
Let’s briefly go over what happened before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your requirements with a web site development firm or designer. After this, the actual “web design” itself would be decided upon. This meant time being spent with a professional website designer discussing things of the web site like the layout, colors, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be hand-coded with all your design elements and codes scripted into your content. The pages were then assembled together into a website using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and performed how it was intended to (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the website deemed as being completed and ready to go live.
The next phase in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. A web site template allows presentation elements of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. The development of ready-made templates helped to speed up the process of developing web sites and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also enabled web designers to expand their services to include business clients and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses began adopting “template-based” web design services, web templates were created that could provide various customizable settings, such as colour palettes, the ability to select different menu styles or layouts, and so on.
As web sites and website building applications developed, website templates also began transforming into website template “systems” that allow website owners to manage the design aspects of their site.
Then, WordPress was developed and helped to start 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:
The WordPress Theme
WordPress themes push website templating systems one step further.
The WordPress theme system controls and integrates every aspect of your web site design. It allows you to add a “skin” over your entire site similarly to what a template system does but it gives you more control over the management, appearance and ability to customize the template settings.
As WordPress has stated in its website …
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 quote states, a unique feature of WordPress is that how your website displays to site visitors does not affect the management of your content.
In simple terms, what this means is that WordPress themes let you modify the look and feel of your website as often as you like without touching your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have set up your website for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when your site is built with WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your site to be completed. You can get your website built simply and get started with any theme you want, and then completely change the look, feel and design of your website in mere minutes, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site with no web coding knowledge required. Just choose a WP theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your web design and modify elements like header images, layout, styling options and more in minutes …
As WordPress is made available as open source software, web design companies all around the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that thousands of great WP themes are made available to WordPress users. Themes are normally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE directory of WP themes which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of excellent website templates at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – WP Theme Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider audience of web users.
WP themes range from functional-looking, to quirky designs that are visually spectacular and could typically cost thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, themes are quite inexpensive.
You can see several theme galleries containing various examples of WP themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WP Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing website building tools that require traditional web design:
Easy To Install
WordPress themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WordPress admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large community of professional website developers who, collectively, make thousands of fantastic WP Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all your site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This makes it possible to replace the “look and feel” of your website as often as you need without changing your blog content.
- Many WP themes provide built-in functionality and options that let you easily customize your site’s style, layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that enables users to update the theme to a newer theme version without losing its unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically from the dashboard.
- Themes helps you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically very inexpensive.
Responsive Theme Design
Many theme designers are now developing “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. laptops, tablets, mobile phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can navigate, read and load a site on various device platforms without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional themes.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will display correctly across all devices, but 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 and coding.
We hope that the above overview has given you a clearer understanding of WP themes, what WP themes are, how they help you and your business save money, and how themes make customizing sites easy.
To learn where to search for the best WP themes for your website or blog, visit this post: Finding The Best Paid And Free WordPress Templates For Your WordPress Web Site Or Blog.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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