Advanced website publishing technologies like WordPress have truly simplified web design and web development for web users.
This greatly benefits business owners planning to start or build a digital presence that they can manage by themselves.
Before blogging and the development of easy-to-use CMS tools, if you needed to get a site for your business, you would have to wait until both the website development and website design processes were fully completed. This could mean waiting around for many weeks, sometimes even many months!
WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, we explore what WordPress themes are, how WP themes save you and your business money on web design costs, and how themes help you easily customize your site.
Web Design Evolution
More website owners are benefiting from a great change in website design that has been going for many years now. If you own a business, you will want to know about this, because it could save your business thousands of dollars on web development or website design costs.
Let’s briefly go over what typically took place before applications like WordPress came along:
First, you would discuss your project with a web site development company or website designer. After this, the “web design” itself would be decided upon. This involved spending time and money with a professional web site designer discussing design elements of your website like the, colors, styles, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be individually created with all your elements and codes scripted into the 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 every other file required to make your site work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and functioned how it should (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the site considered as being finished and ready for sign off.
The next step in the evolution of web design was the introduction of “web templating elements”. Web site templates allow the design of the website to be worked on separately from content on the page. Having template elements helped speed up the web development process and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also enabled website development companies to service businesses and clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of web development agencies choosing “template-based” websites increased, web templates started being introduced that provided clients with different customization features, such as colour palettes, the ability to specify different formats or layouts, etc …
As websites and website editor tools evolved, website templates also started to evolve into website templating “systems” that allowed website owners to customize the visual elements of a website.
Then, WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new web 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
A WordPress theme takes the idea of a website template system further.
A WordPress theme controls every aspect of your website design. It lets you add a “skin” to your entire site similarly to what a website template system does but it also also gives you complete control over the management, presentation and customization of template options.
As described in 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 site displays to visitors in no way affects the management of your content.
Basically, what this means is that themes let you modify the appearance of your site as often as you like without modifying your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if WP website has been configured for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when your site is powered with WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any WP theme you want, and completely modify the look, feel and design of your site in a few seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without requiring website code development knowledge. Just choose any theme you want, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and modify elements like header images, layout, typography and more in minutes …
Since WordPress is distributed as open source software, website design companies anywhere in the world can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that loads of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are generally distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE directory of WordPress themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of great WordPress themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider audience of web users.
Themes range from functional-looking, to elegant designs that are quite stunning and could normally cost many hundreds of dollars to create. Surprisingly, themes can be bought very cheaply, especially when you compare the cost to what it would have cost you if a web designer had to code it from scratch.
You can see a number of theme galleries containing stunning examples of great themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of WordPress Themes
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over choosing web development applications that require traditional web design:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your administrator login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large online community of commercial website designers who make thousands of fantastic WordPress Themes available to users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all of your blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This means you can replace themes as often as you like without deleting your site data.
- Many WP themes come with 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 taste.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that lets users upgrade themes to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically right within your admin panel.
- WordPress themes allow users to save hundreds of dollars on website design costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally quite affordable.
Responsive Themes
Many theme developers are now developing “responsive” WordPress themes.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically resize 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 different types of devices. Users can scroll, read and load a site on most if not all device platforms without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional browser elements.
Note: When searching for 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 across all of your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards, practices and techniques of website design coding.
Hopefully, the above article has helped you gain a clearer understanding of themes, what themes are, how WP themes help you and your business save money on web design costs, and how WordPress themes make customizing web sites easy.
To learn where to find great themes for your website, go here:
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