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.

WordPress Themes - An IntroductionThe introduction of web publishing tools like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) has effectively simplified web design and web development for business owners.

This greatly benefits businesses planning on getting a website that they can manage themselves.

Prior to “blogging” and the development of powerful and simple CMS technologies, if you wanted to get a professional web site built for your business, you normally would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This process could take weeks, even months!

The introduction of WordPress themes changed all this. In this blog post, we will explore what WP themes are, how they save your business money on web design costs, and how themes allow you to easily customize your website.

Website Design Revolution

More businesses are benefiting from a tremendous 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 can save you a lot of time and money on web development or website design costs.

In a nutshell, here’s what happened before CMS tools like WordPress were developed:

The first step would be to meet with a website development agency or web site designer for a brief. After this, the “web design” itself had to be decided upon. This required spending time with a professional website designer going over design elements of your website like the, colours, styles, visual elements, content, etc.

Each page of your web site then had to be individually created with all the design elements and scripts coded into the page content. The pages were then assembled together into a web site using hyperlinks and 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.

A Basic Guide To Themes

(image source:adobe.com)

Only after everything had been tested and was working the way it was supposed to (and looking the way a client had wanted it to look), was the site deemed as being finished and ready for sign off.

Then, web design “templates” were developed”. A web site template allows the design of the website to be created separately from the page content. The introduction of templates helped to speed up the website development process and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed web site development agencies to expand their services to include business clients with smaller budgets …

WordPress Themes - An Introduction

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

As more web site development companies began adopting “template-based” web design services, web templates started being designed to provide clients with expanding custom options, such as colour palettes, the ability to select different styles and page layouts, etc …

As web sites and website editor software developed, website templates also started to transform into website templating “systems” that let website owners customize their website’s visual aspects.

And then, a “blogging” tool called WordPress was developed and helped to start a new online publishing revolution …

A Newbie's Guide To Understanding WP Themes

(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

A WordPress theme takes the concept of a website templating system even further.

A WP theme controls and integrates every aspect of your web design. It allows you to add a “skin” to your entire site much like a web template system does but it also also gives you more control over the management and ability to customize the site’s template options.

As the official WordPress site states …

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, one of the unique and revolutionary features of a WordPress theme is that the way your site looks to site visitors on the outside in no way affects the way your website works in the backend to handle areas like content management and functionality.

In plain English terms, what this means is that you can change the look and feel of your website as often as you like without affecting your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have set up WordPress site for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.

This is huge! Why?

Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your site to be done. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any theme you want, and completely edit the look, feel and design of your site in seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!

Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WP site without needing web code development knowledge. Just choose a WordPress theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your site’s design and modify elements like header images, layout, style settings and more in less than a few minutes …

A Basic Guide To Understanding Themes

Since WordPress is made available as open source software, thousands of web designers can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress template system.

This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes can be downloaded by WP users. Themes are usually distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.

The WordPress development team maintains a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great website templates completely free of charge …

A Basic Guide To WP Themes

(WordPress.org – Free Theme Directory)

As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider audience of web users.

WP themes vary from minimal-looking, to clever designs that are breathtaking and would normally cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most themes are very inexpensive.

You can view several WP theme galleries containing stunning examples of great premium WordPress themes in this post:

Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!

(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)

Benefits Of Themes

Here are just some of the benefits of choosing WordPress themes over choosing traditional website design:

Easy Installation

Themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin account and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP themes directory at WordPress.org) directly inside your WordPress admin’s “Theme” section.

WordPress Themes - An Overview

Additionally,

  • WordPress has a growing online community of professional website designers and design companies who contribute thousands of quality WP Themes available to WordPress users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
  • Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all of your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
  • A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This makes it possible to change the “look and feel” of your web site or blog as often as you like without deleting your underlying content of your web site.
  • Many WP themes come with additional built-in functionality and options that allow you to customize the site’s layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your needs.
  • Many themes are built using a framework that lets you upgrade the theme to newer versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
  • WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically right inside your dashboard.
  • Themes allow WordPress users to save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally quite affordable.

Responsive WordPress Theme Design

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

A responsive theme allows a website to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. laptops, iPads, cell phones, etc.) …

WP Themes - An Overview

A responsive theme is also optimized for different platforms. Users can navigate, read and load the site on a range of device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to install additional browser elements.

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 across all of your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards of web design.

Hopefully, the above article has given you a better overview of themes, what themes are, how themes help you and your business save money on website design costs, and how themes make it easy to customize your web site.

To learn where to find great WordPress themes for your website or blog, visit this page: How To Find The Best Paid And Free WordPress Web Templates For Your Business Online.

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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now

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