Powerful web site management tools like the WordPress CMS have effectively simplified web design and web development for users.
This is a great thing for businesses that want to own a website that they can easily manage.
Prior to blogging and the development of powerful and simple CMS software, if you wanted to build a web site built for your business, you had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This could mean weeks, sometimes even many months of waiting around!
The development of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this blog post, you will learn what themes are, how WordPress themes save you and your business money on website development costs, and how WordPress themes help you easily customize your site.
A New Development In Web Design
More website owners have benefited from a revolution in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a business, you may want to learn about this, because it could save your business a lot of time and money on web development and website design costs.
Let’s briefly review what happened before WordPress came along:
First, you would discuss your requirements with a web development company or designer. After this, the design would be discussed and agreed upon. This required spending time and money with a professional website designer going over elements of your site such as the layout, colors, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all the elements and codes scripted into your content. All pages were then assembled together into a web site using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files required to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and worked how it was intended to (and looking the way the client had wanted it to look), was the site deemed to be finished and ready to go live.
The next stage in the evolution of web design was the introduction of “website templates”. Web templates allow design elements of the website to be created separately from the page content. The introduction of ready-made templates helped make web site development faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also allowed web 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 businesses choosing “template-based” web design services increased, templates were designed that provided various customization settings, like the option to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and website editing applications developed, website templates also began to transform into website templating ”systems”, letting website owners and website designers customize the visual elements of a web site.
And then, WordPress came along and helped to start a new content management 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
A WordPress theme expands website template systems further.
The WordPress theme system controls every aspect of your website design. It lets you add a “skin” to your entire site similarly to what a template system does but also gives you complete control over the management, appearance and customization of template options.
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 feature of a WP theme is that how your site looks to visitors externally does not affect your site’s content management aspects.
In simple terms, what this means is that themes let you modify the appearance of your website as often as you like without affecting your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have set up your site for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your web site. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website design to be done. You can get your website built simply and get started with any theme you like, and then change the entire look, feel and design of your website in seconds, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site without needing web code development skills. Just choose a theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like headers, layout, style settings and more in minutes …
Since WordPress is made available as open source software, web designers from all over the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress 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 General Public License, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to access thousands of great themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Free WP Theme Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their content online, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider range of users.
Themes vary from minimal-looking, to designs that are simply impressive and would easily cost many hundreds of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most themes can be bought fairly inexpensively, especially when you compare the price to what it would have cost you if a website designer had to develop it from scratch.
You can see a number of theme galleries that include stunning examples of themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Using WP Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using traditional web template design:
Be Up And Running In Very Little Time
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing community of commercial web designers and design companies who, collectively, contribute thousands of fantastic WordPress Themes available to WP users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This means you can swap themes as often as you like without deleting your content.
- Many WP themes provide additional built-in functionality and settings that enable you to easily customize your theme’s layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that enables you to update the theme to a newer theme version without losing its unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically directly from within the dashboard.
- Themes allow WP users to save hundreds of dollars on website development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are typically very inexpensive.
About Responsive Themes
Many theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes for the WordPress CMS.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically resize to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different platforms. Users can navigate, read and load the site on different devices without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional themes.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your web site displays well across all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards of website design coding.
Hopefully, the above overview has helped you gain a better understanding about WP themes, what themes are, how they help you and your business save money, and how themes let you easily customize a WordPress site.
To learn where to search for the best themes for your website, click here:
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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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