The development of powerful web management systems like the WordPress CMS platform has truly simplified web design and web development for non-technical website owners.
This is a great thing for entrepreneurial-minded people wanting to start a website that they can easily manage.
Prior to blogging and the development of easy-to-use content management systems, if you needed to build a site built for your business, you typically had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were completely done. This could take many weeks, sometimes even months!
The introduction of WordPress themes changed all this. In this article, we explore what WordPress themes are, how WP themes save your business money on web design costs, and how themes allow you to easily customize your WP site.
Web Site Design Revolution
Website owners are benefiting from a tremendous change in website design that started many years ago. If you are a small business owner, you will want to learn about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.
Very briefly, this is how things used to work in “traditional” web development before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your requirements with a website development agency or designer. Then, the “web design” had to be discussed and agreed upon. This involved time and money being spent with a professional web designer going over areas of your web site like the layout, colours, styles, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all the design elements and codes written into your content. All of the pages were then assembled into a website using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files required to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and functioned the way it was intended to (and looking how the client had wanted it to look), was the website considered to be finished and ready for delivery.
The next step in the evolution of web design was the introduction of “web templating elements”. Website templates allow the ”look and feel” of the web site to be created separately from the page content. Having ready-made templates helped to speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also allowed website development agencies to service small businesses and clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web development firms began choosing “template-based” websites, templates started being designed that provided clients with different customizable features, such as color palettes, the ability to specify different content styles, formats, elements, page layouts, etc …
As web sites and web building tools developed, website templates also began evolving into web template ”systems”, letting users and web designers manage the design aspects of a site.
Then, WordPress came along and helped to kick off 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
WordPress themes push web templating systems much further.
A WordPress theme controls every aspect of your site’s design. It lets you add a “skin” to your site in a similar way that a web template system does but also provides you with complete control over the management, presentation and customization aspects of 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 the above states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of the WordPress theme is that how your web site appears to site visitors on the outside is a different thing from the way your content is managed.
In simple terms, what this means is that you can modify the look and feel of your website 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 WP site has been set up for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when your site is powered with WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your website design to be completed. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any WordPress theme you like, and completely modify the look, feel and design of your website in seconds, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without needing website code programming knowledge. Simply pick any WP 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, style settings and more with just a few mouse clicks …
As WordPress is open source software, hundreds of website design companies all around the world can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that loads of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are usually distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE directory of WordPress themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – Theme Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
Themes vary from minimal-looking, to creative designs that are simply impressive and could easily cost many hundreds of dollars to design. Surprisingly, themes can be bought very 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 that include stunning examples of great themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits And Advantages Of Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using website development tools that require traditional website design:
Ready To Start Using In Minutes
WordPress themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing online community of commercial theme designers and design companies who, collectively, make thousands of great-looking, high quality WP Themes available to WP users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all the site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This means you can swap the “look and feel” of your web site as often as you need without modifying the content.
- Many themes provide built-in features and options that allow you to easily customize your theme’s layout, style and design elements to create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets users upgrade the theme to a newer theme version without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically directly from the dashboard.
- WordPress themes allow WP users to save thousands of dollars on web design costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically very inexpensive.
Responsive Themes
Many WordPress theme designers are now developing “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. PCs, iPads, smart phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and load the site on all device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to have installed 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 works across your visitors’ 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 web design and web coding.
We hope this overview has helped you gain a better understanding about WordPress themes, what themes are, how themes can help you and your business save money, and how WP themes make it easy to customize a web site.
In the next article on understanding basic WordPress features, we show you where to search for the best themes for your blog.
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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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