Powerful web site publishing platforms like the WordPress CMS platform have truly improved web design and web development for non-technical website owners.
This greatly benefits entrepreneurial-minded people wanting to start a website that they can manage themselves.
Before “blogging” and the introduction of easy-to-use content management systems, if you wanted a business web site, you typically had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were completely done. This could mean waiting for weeks, even many months!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this blog post, you will learn what themes are, how themes save you money on website design costs, and how WP themes let you easily customize your WP site.
A Revolution In Website Design
More businesses today will benefit from a change in website design that started many years ago. If you are a small business owner, you may want to learn about this, because it could save you a lot of time and money on website development and web design costs.
Let’s briefly go over what happened before tools like WordPress were developed:
The first step would be to meet with a website developer or web designer for a brief. Then, the design had to be discussed and agreed upon. This meant time and money being spent with someone with web design skills discussing elements of the site such as the layout, colours, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be individually created with all of your elements and codes scripted into your content. All pages were then assembled into a website using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your website work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and performed the way it should (and looking how the client had wanted it to look), was the site considered to be completed and ready to go live.
Then, website “templates” came along”. A web site template allows presentation elements of the website to be created separately from the page content. The development of ready-made templates helped speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also enabled web development firms to work with business clients and clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses started using “template-based” websites, web templates started being designed that provided clients with different customization options, such as color palettes, the ability to specify different layouts or header, footer and navigation elements, etc …
As web sites and web building software evolved, web templates also began to evolve into web template “systems” that permit users to control the visual aspects of a web site.
Then, WordPress was developed and helped to kick off 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:
About WordPress Themes
WordPress themes improve web templating systems much further.
The WP theme system controls and unifies every aspect of your web design. It allows you to add a “skin” to your site much like a template system does but it gives you more control over the management, appearance and customization of template features.
As explained 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 and revolutionary feature of WordPress is that how your website looks to visitors is controlled independently of your site’s functionality and content management.
In simple terms, what this means is that a theme lets you change the design of your website as much and as often as you want without affecting your website’s content and all the work you’ve put 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 site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when your website is powered by WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your website built quickly and start with any theme you like, and completely customize the look, feel and design of your site in minutes, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site without requiring web code programming knowledge. Just choose a WordPress theme you want, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your entire site’s web design and customize elements like header images, page layout, styling options and more with just a couple of mouse clicks …
Because WordPress is made available as open source software, professional web designers can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that thousands of great WP themes are made available to WP users. WP are generally distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent WP themes for free …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now focused on developing themes for a wider audience of WordPress site owners.
WP themes range from functional-looking, to designs that are quite stunning and would typically cost many hundreds of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most premium themes can be purchased fairly cheaply, especially when compared to what you would have had to pay if a web designer had to build it from scratch.
You can view several theme galleries containing many examples of great themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits & Advantages Of Using Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over using web building applications that require traditional website design:
Installation Is Easy & Fast
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving community of commercial theme designers and design companies who contribute thousands of great-looking, high quality WP Themes available to WP users. Many of these themes are 100% 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 digital content. This makes it possible to change themes as often as you like without deleting your content.
- Many WordPress themes provide additional built-in functionality and settings that allow you to customize the site’s layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that lets users update the theme to a newer theme version without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically right inside the admin panel.
- Themes allow users to save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally quite inexpensive.
About Responsive WP Theme Design
Many WordPress theme designers are now creating “responsive” WP themes.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different types of devices. Users can navigate, read and display the site on different devices without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional browser elements.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site works across all 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 and coding.
Hopefully, this post has given you a clearer understanding of themes, what WP themes are, how WordPress themes help you and your business save money on website design costs, and how themes make customizing websites easy.
To learn where to find great WordPress themes for your blog, see this page: Finding The Best Free And Paid WordPress Web Themes For Your Site Or Blog.
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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