The development of web site management technologies like the WordPress CMS has truly improved web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This is great for business owners thinking of getting a website that is relatively simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of advanced CMS applications, if you needed to build a professional site for your business, you had to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This could take many weeks, even months!
The development of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this article, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how they can help you and your business save money on web development costs, and how themes allow you to easily customize your WordPress site.
Revolutionary Web Design
Businesses, especially small businesses, have benefited from a revolutionary change in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a small business, you may want to learn about this, because it can save your business a lot of time and money on web development and website design costs.
Let’s briefly go over how things worked in “traditional” website development before CMS solutions like WordPress came along:
First, you would meet with a website development agency or designer for a brief. After this, the “web design” would be decided upon. This required spending time with a professional web site designer discussing elements of your 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 the design elements and scripts coded around your page content. All pages were then assembled into a web site using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and worked the way it was supposed to (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the site considered as being completed and ready for delivery.
Then, web design “templates” were developed”. A website template allows the design of the web site to be worked on separately from content on the page. 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 companies to service business clients and clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses started adopting “template-based” websites, web templates were developed to offer clients with various custom features and options, such as the option to switch colours, styles, layouts
As websites and web editor tools evolved, website templates also started to transform into web template “systems” that let website owners customize the visual aspects of a site.
Then, WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new business 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:
About WordPress Themes
WordPress themes push website template systems even further.
The WP theme system controls every aspect of your web site design. It allows you to add a “skin” to your site in a similar way that a web template system does but it provides users with more control over the management, appearance and customization of all template options.
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 and revolutionary feature of WordPress is that how your web site appears to visitors in no way affects the management of your content.
In simple terms, what this means is that themes let you change the look and feel of your website as often as you want without modifying your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have configured WP website for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your website. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this important?
Because with WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be completed. You can get your website built quickly and start with any WP theme you like, and then completely modify the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in a few minutes, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site with no website code programming skills required. Just choose any WP theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like header images, page layout, styling options and more with just a couple of mouse clicks …
Since WordPress is open source software, website designers anywhere in the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of great WordPress themes are made available to WordPress users. Themes are generally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent website templates at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Theme Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider range of uses.
WordPress themes range from functional-looking, to creative designs that are simply impressive and would easily cost many hundreds of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most premium WP themes are fairly inexpensive.
You can view a number of theme galleries that include various examples of great themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using traditional web template design:
Really Easy To Install
WordPress themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free WordPress theme directory at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large community of commercial theme developers and development companies who, collectively, make thousands of professional WordPress Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all of the blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This allows you replace WP themes as often as you need without deleting the site data.
- Many themes provide additional features and settings that enable you to easily customize your theme’s layout, style and design properties to create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables users to update the theme to newer versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically within your admin panel.
- Themes helps you save thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally very affordable.
About Responsive Themes
Many WP theme designers are now creating “responsive” themes for the WP CMS.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. computers, iPads, mobile phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and load the site on all device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional themes.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will work correctly on all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards, practices and techniques of web design coding.
Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of WP themes, what WordPress themes are, how WP themes help you save money, and how WP themes allow you to easily customize your site.
In the next article in our article series for non-technical users on understanding basic WP features, we show you where to find 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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