The development of advanced content management platforms like the WordPress CMS platform has effectively improved web design and web development for web users.
This is great news for entrepreneurial-minded people planning to start or build a website that they can easily manage themselves.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of powerful CMS tools, if you needed to get a professional site for your business, you normally would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This process could mean waiting around for weeks, even months!
The introduction of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this post, we explore what WP themes are, how themes save you money on website design costs, and how themes help you easily customize your website.
Web Design Revolution
More businesses today are benefiting from a change in website design that started a number of years ago. If you are a small business owner, you will want to know more about this, because it could save your business a lot of time and money on web development or web design costs.
Very briefly, this is what used to happen before WordPress came along:
First, you would meet with a web development agency or web site designer for a brief. Next, the actual “web design” would be decided upon. This required spending time and money with a professional web site designer going over design elements of the website such as the layout, colours, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be individually created with all of your design elements and codes written into the content. All of the pages were then assembled together into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files required to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and worked the way it should (and looking the way a client had wanted it to look), was the web site considered to be finished and ready for delivery.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. A web template allows presentation elements of the website to be created separately from content on the page. The introduction of template elements helped speed up the website creation process and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also enabled website developers and designers to work with business clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of web development firms choosing “template-based” web design services increased, templates started being designed that offered different customization settings, such as the option to choose different colors, styles, layouts
As websites and website editing software evolved, website templates also started to evolve into web templating “systems” that let users control their site’s design components.
And then, WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new online 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
A WordPress theme takes the concept of a web template system much further.
A WP theme controls the design elements of your website. It lets you add a “skin” to your entire site similarly to what a web template system does but it provides users with complete control over the management, presentation and customization of your template settings.
As the official WordPress site explains …
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 WordPress is that the way your site looks to visitors is controlled independently of how your content is managed.
In plain English terms, what this means is that you can change the design 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 you have configured WP website for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your site’s web design is done. You can get your website built quickly and start with any theme you like, and then completely customize the look, feel and design of your site in minutes, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site with no website design skills required. Simply pick any theme you want, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your site’s design and modify elements like headers, layout, styling options and more in minutes …
Since WordPress is open source software, web design companies can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes are made available to WP users. Themes are normally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great WP themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Theme Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their content online, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider audience of web users.
WordPress themes range from bare-looking, to designs that are quite beautiful and would typically cost thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most premium WordPress themes are very inexpensive.
You can see several theme galleries that include many examples of great WP themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over choosing traditional web template design:
Ready To Go To Work In Very Little Time
WP themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip file that contains the plugin files 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 within your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing online community of commercial web developers and development companies who make thousands of great WordPress Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all of the blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This makes it possible to change the “look and feel” of your site as often as you want without changing your settings.
- Many themes come with additional functionality and options that enable you to customize the site’s style and design properties to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that lets users update the theme to a newer theme version without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically within the dashboard.
- Themes lets you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically very inexpensive.
About Responsive WP Theme Design
Many WP theme designers are now creating themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. PCs, iPads, cell phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and load your site on most device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional themes.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your web site displays well across all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards and practices of web design and coding.
I hope that this basic overview has given you a clearer understanding about themes, what themes are, how themes help you save money, and how WordPress themes make customizing your web design easy.
In the next article in the article WordPress beginners on basic WP features, we show you where to find the best WP themes for your website or blog.
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