WordPress Themes Explained

This tutorial explains what WordPress themes are, what makes WordPress themes unique, and the benefits of using WordPress themes to improve the design of your website or blog.

Understanding WP ThemesFlexible website management systems like WordPress have effectively improved web design and web development for users.

This greatly benefits individuals or businesses planning to start a website that is easy to manage.

Before “blogging” and the introduction of easy-to-use CMS technologies, if you needed a site, you had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were completely done. This process could mean waiting for weeks, even months!

WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, we look at what WP themes are, how WP themes can help you save money, and how WordPress themes allow you to easily customize your WordPress site.

Web Design Revolution

More businesses will benefit from a great change in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a business, you will want to learn more about this, because it could save your business a lot of time and money on website development and web design costs.

Let’s briefly go over what normally happened before CMS applications like WordPress came along:

First, you would meet with a website developer or designer for a brief. Next, the “web design” itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This meant spending time and money with a professional website designer discussing elements of the website like the layout, colors, styles, page elements, content, etc.

Every page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all of your design elements and codes written into the page content. The pages were then assembled together into a web site using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files required to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.

Themes - An Overview

(image source:adobe.com)

Only once everything had been tested and performed the way it should (and looking the way a client had wanted it to look), was the website considered to have been finished and ready to go live.

The next stage in the evolution of web design was the introduction of “website templates”. Web site templates allow ”look and feel” elements of the website to be created separately from the page content. Having templates helped speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in reduced production costs. This also enabled web site development firms to expand their services to include businesses with less money to spend on marketing …

Themes - An Introduction

(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)

As the number of small businesses choosing “template-based” websites increased, templates were designed to provide clients with a range of customizable features and options, such as the ability to choose different colors, styles, layouts

As web sites and web editor software evolved, website templates also began evolving into website template “systems” that allow users to customize the visual components of a site.

And then, WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new website revolution …

WordPress Themes - An Overview

(WordPress – A Content Publishing Revolution)

To learn more about content management systems and the benefits of the WordPress CMS, see the tutorial below:

WordPress Themes

WordPress themes expand website templating systems one step further.

The WordPress theme system controls and integrates all of the design areas of the web site. It lets you add a “skin” to your entire site much like a website template system does but it gives you more control over the management and customization of the template features.

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 stated above, a unique feature of WordPress is that how your web site displays to visitors in no way affects your site’s functional aspects (e.g. content management and functionality).

In simple terms, what this means is that a theme lets you modify the design of your site as much and as often as you want without touching your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if WordPress site has been set up for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your web site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.

This is important. Why?

Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your business website built simply and start with any WordPress theme you like, and then customize the entire look, feel and design of your website in seconds, whenever you choose … and as many times as you like!

Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site with no website code editing knowledge necessary. Just choose any WordPress theme you like, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and customize elements like headers, page layout, styling options and more in minutes …

Understanding Themes

Because WordPress is distributed as open source software, website designers from all over the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP template system.

This means that loads of high quality WP themes are made available to WP users. WP are normally distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.

The WordPress development team maintains a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of excellent WordPress themes at $0 cost …

WP Themes - An Overview

(WordPress.org – WP Themes Directory)

As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider range of users.

Themes range from simple-looking, to jaw-dropping designs that are visually beautiful and would easily cost thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most premium WP themes can be purchased fairly cheaply, especially when you compare the price to what you would have had to pay if a web designer had to develop it from scratch.

You can see a number of WordPress theme galleries containing various examples of great premium themes in this page:

Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!

(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)

Benefits Of WordPress Themes

Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over choosing traditional website design:

Ready To Start Using In Minutes

Themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP dashboard.

Understanding WP Themes

Additionally,

  • WordPress has a thriving community of professional theme developers who, collectively, contribute thousands of great WP Themes available to WordPress users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
  • Themes give sites a consistent look across all of the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
  • A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This makes it possible to replace WordPress themes as often as you need without disturbing the site information.
  • Many WP themes come with additional built-in functionality and settings that allow you to customize the site’s style, layout and design properties and create a unique look to suit your taste.
  • Many WP themes are built using a framework that lets users upgrade themes to a newer theme version without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
  • WordPress lets you search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically inside your dashboard.
  • Themes helps you save hundreds of dollars on website development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are typically quite inexpensive.

About Responsive WordPress Themes

Many theme designers are now developing “responsive” WordPress themes.

A responsive theme enables a website to automatically resize to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …

A Newbie's Guide To WP Themes

A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can scroll, read and display the site on a range of device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional themes.

Note: When downloading WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site works across all of your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards and practices of web design coding.

Hopefully, the above article has provided you with a good overview of themes, what WordPress themes are, how themes can help your business save money, and how themes make it easy to customize a WP site.

To learn where to find the best WordPress themes for your website, click here:

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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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