Advanced web site management technologies like WordPress have truly improved web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This greatly benefits entrepreneurial-minded people wanting a website that is relatively easy to manage.
Before “blogging” and the introduction of user-friendly CMS solutions, if you wanted to get a professional website built for your business, you normally had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were fully completed. This could take weeks, even months!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this blog post, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how they save you and your business money on web development costs, and how themes allow you to easily customize your site.
A Revolution In Web Site Design
Website owners will benefit from a change in website design that started a number of years ago. If you are a small business owner, you may want to know more about this, because it can save you thousands of dollars on website development or web design costs.
Let’s go over how things typically worked in “traditional” web development before tools like WordPress were developed:
First, you would discuss your project with a website developer or web site designer. Next, the “web design” would be decided upon. This involved time and money being spent with someone with website design skills going over elements of your web site like the layout, colours, formats, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be hand-coded with all your elements and codes inserted into the page content. The pages were then assembled together into a web site using links 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 was functioning the way it was intended to (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the web site considered to have been completed and ready to go live.
Then, website “templates” came along”. A web site template allows design elements of the website to be created separately from content on the page. The development of ready-made templates helped to speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in lowered production costs. This also enabled web development agencies to expand their services to include businesses and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses started adopting “template-based” websites, web templates started being introduced that provided clients with various customizable features and options, like the option to switch colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and web building applications developed, website templates also began to evolve into web templating “systems” that let users and website developers manage the design components of their website.
Then, a “blogging” application called WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new 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
WordPress themes push the idea of a website templating system much further.
The WordPress theme system controls and unifies every aspect of your website design. It lets you add a “skin” over your site similarly to what a template system does but it also also gives you more control over the management, presentation and customization of all 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 stated above, one of the unique features of WordPress is that the way your web site displays to visitors is kept independent of your site’s content management settings.
In simple terms, what this means is that you can change the look and feel of your site as often as you like without affecting your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have set up your website for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when your site is built with WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your web design to be completed. You can get your website built quickly and start with any WordPress theme you want, and completely edit the look, feel and design of your website in a few seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site with no web code editing knowledge necessary. Simply pick any theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your website design and customize elements like header images, page layout, typography and more in a few seconds …
Because WordPress is made available as open source software, commercial web designers all around the world can design themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WP users. WordPress are generally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to access thousands of great themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider audience of WordPress site owners.
WordPress themes vary from bare-looking, to designs that are quite breathtaking and could easily cost thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, WP themes can be bought quite inexpensively, especially when compared to what it would have cost you if a web designer had to code it from scratch.
You can view a number of WP theme galleries containing stunning examples of WordPress themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Themes
Here are just some of the many benefits of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional web template design:
Be Up And Running In No Time
Themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin section and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving community of professional theme designers who, collectively, contribute thousands of excellent WP Themes available to WordPress users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all of the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This allows you change WordPress themes as often as you like without disturbing your underlying content.
- Many themes come with additional built-in functionality and options that enable you to customize your theme’s layout, style and design elements to create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables users to upgrade the theme to newer theme versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from within your site’s administration interface.
- Themes lets you save thousands of dollars on web design costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are typically quite inexpensive.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many WordPress theme developers are now developing WP themes that incorporate “responsive” design protocols.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different platforms. Users can scroll, read and display a site on different device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional themes.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site displays well on all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards of website design coding.
Hopefully, the above article has given you a better overview of WP themes, what themes are, how WP themes help you and your business save money on web design costs, and how themes make it easy to customize your WP site.
In our next blog post on understanding basic WordPress features, we show you where to search for the best WordPress themes for your website or 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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