The development of advanced content management systems like WordPress has effectively simplified web design and web development for web users.
This is a great thing for business owners planning to start a web presence that is simple and easy to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of powerful content management systems, if you wanted to build a professional web site for your business, you would have to wait until both the website development and website design processes were completely done. This could mean waiting around for many weeks, even many months!
The development of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this post, you will learn what themes are, how themes can help your business save money, and how WP themes help you easily customize your WP site.
Evolution In Web Design
Businesses are benefiting from a tremendous change in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a small business owner, you may want to know about this, because it can save you a lot of time and money on web development or website design costs.
Let’s briefly go over what happened before WordPress came along:
First, you would meet with a web developer or web designer for a brief. After that, the actual “web design” would be discussed and agreed upon. This involved spending time with someone with web design skills going over elements of the web site like the layout, colors, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be individually created with all of the design elements and codes scripted into your page content. All pages were then assembled into a web site using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file required to make your website work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and functioned the way it was supposed to (and looking how the client had wanted it to look), was the web site deemed to be completed and ready for delivery.
The next step in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “web templates”. A web site template allows ”look and feel” elements of the website to be worked on separately from the page content. Having template elements helped to make the process of web site creation faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also enabled website development firms to service business clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses choosing “template-based” web design services increased, templates were developed that could provide different custom options, like colour palettes, the ability to specify different menu styles and layouts, and so on.
As web sites and web editing applications developed, website templates also started to transform into web templating ”systems”, allowing website owners and website designers to customize the visual components of a website.
Then, a “blogging” application called WordPress came along and helped to start 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:
WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme takes the concept of a web templating system much further.
The WordPress theme system controls and unifies every aspect of your site’s design. It allows you to add a “skin” to your entire site much like a web template system does but also gives you complete control over the management, presentation and customization aspects of your template settings.
As WordPress has described in its website …
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 quote states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of the WordPress theme is that how your web site looks to site visitors externally is managed separately from the management of your content.
Basically, what this means is that you can change the look and feel of your website as much and as often as you like without affecting your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if WordPress website has been configured 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 unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be completed. You can get your website built simply and get started with any WordPress theme you like, and completely customize the look, feel and design of your site in seconds, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site without requiring website code editing skills. Simply choose any WordPress theme you want, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like headers, layout, typography and more in less than a few minutes …
Since WordPress is made available as open source software, professional web design companies all around the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP template system.
This means that loads of high quality WP themes are made available to WP users. Themes are normally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent WP themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – Free Theme Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider range of uses.
WordPress themes vary from simple-looking, to exciting designs that are quite breathtaking and could normally cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, themes can be purchased quite inexpensively, especially when compared to what you would have had to pay if a website designer had to develop it from scratch.
You can view a number of WordPress theme galleries containing many examples of themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional web template design:
Fast And Easy Installation
Themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving community of professional website developers who, collectively, make thousands of great-looking, high quality WordPress Themes available to WordPress users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent design across all the blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This allows you swap WordPress themes as often as you want without affecting your site information.
- Many WordPress themes provide additional built-in functionality and settings that enable you to easily customize your theme’s layout, style and design elements to create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that allows users to upgrade themes to a newer theme version without losing its unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically within your site’s administration interface.
- Themes helps you save hundreds of dollars on web design costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally very inexpensive.
Responsive WP Theme Design
Many WordPress theme developers are now creating themes that incorporate “responsive” web design.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically resize to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. computers, tablets, cell phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different types of devices. Users can navigate, read and display your site on different device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to install additional browser elements.
Note: When downloading 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 on all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards of website design coding.
I hope that this basic overview has helped you gain a better understanding of WordPress themes, what themes are, how themes can help you and your business save money, and how themes make customizing websites easy.
To learn where to search for the best themes for your website or blog, go here:
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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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