The introduction of flexible web site management tools like the WordPress CMS has truly simplified web design and web development for users.
This is fantastic news for businesses that want to own a website that is relatively simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Prior to blogging and the introduction of user-friendly content management systems, if you wanted a professional web site, you normally would have to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This process could take weeks, even many months!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this blog post, we will explore what themes are, how themes help your business save money, and how WordPress themes allow you to easily customize your site.
Web Design Revolution
More website owners today are benefiting from a great change in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a small business owner, you will want to know more about this, because it could save your business thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
Let’s review what happened before WordPress were introduced:
First, you would discuss your requirements with a web development company or web designer. After this, the actual “web design” itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This involved time and money being spent with someone with website design skills discussing things of your web site like the layout, colours, styles, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be individually created with all your design elements and scripts coded into your content. All of the pages were then assembled together into a website using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and functioned the way it was intended to (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the website deemed to be completed and ready to go live.
The next phase in the evolution of web design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. A web template allows the design of the website to be created separately from the page content. Having template elements helped to make the process of site creation faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also enabled web site developers and designers to expand their services to include business clients and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of website development agencies adopting “template-based” web design services increased, templates started being created that could provide clients with various custom features and options, like the option to choose different colors, styles, layouts
As websites and website building tools evolved, website templates also began to transform into website template “systems” that enable users to control the design components of a web site.
And then, a “blogging” application called WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new digital 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:
WordPress Themes
WordPress themes take the idea of a web templating system much further.
The WordPress theme system controls every aspect of your web design. It lets you add a “skin” to your entire site similarly to what a website template system does but also provides users with complete control over the management, presentation and customization of all template settings.
According to 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 and revolutionary feature of WordPress is that how your site displays to site visitors externally is kept independent of the management of your content.
In plain English terms, what this means is that a theme lets you change the design of your site as often as you want without touching your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have configured your website for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with another 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 with WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your web design to be done. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any theme you want, and modify the entire look, feel and design of your site in a few minutes, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site with no website coding skills required. Just pick any WP theme you want, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your site’s design and customize elements like header images, layout, typography and more in less than a few minutes …
Because WordPress is distributed as open source software, hundreds of website designers can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of great WP themes are made available to WP users. Themes are usually distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of great WordPress themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider range of uses.
Themes range from simple-looking, to creative designs that are stunning and would typically cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most WordPress themes can be bought very cheaply, especially when you compare the cost to what you would have had to pay if a web designer had to develop it from scratch.
You can see a number of WP theme galleries containing various examples of great premium themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of choosing WordPress themes over using traditional web template design:
Be Up And Running In No Time
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your admin area and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large online community of commercial theme designers who, collectively, contribute thousands of great-looking, high quality WP Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent design across all of the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This allows you swap themes as often as you like without disturbing your blog’s underlying settings.
- Many themes come with built-in features and settings that enable you to customize your theme’s layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows you to upgrade the theme to newer versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from within the site’s administration interface.
- WordPress themes lets you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically quite affordable.
About Responsive Themes
Many WordPress theme designers are now creating “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically resize to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and load the site on various device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional display elements.
Note: When selecting, 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 will work correctly on all of your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards of website design coding.
Hopefully, this overview has given you a better understanding about themes, what themes are, how they help you save money on website development costs, and how WP themes let you easily customize your website.
In our next article in our article series on basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to find great themes for your website.
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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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