Powerful web site publishing systems like the WordPress CMS have effectively improved web design and web development for users.
This is fantastic news for businesses wanting to start a website that they can manage themselves.
Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of user-friendly CMS technologies, if you wanted a professional business website, you normally had to wait until both the website development and web design processes were completely done. This could mean weeks, even sometimes many months of waiting for the work to be done!
The introduction of WordPress themes changed all this. In this blog post, we take a look at what themes are, how themes can help you save money on web design costs, and how WordPress themes allow you to easily customize your website.
Web Site Design Revolution
More businesses today will benefit from a tremendous change in website design that has been going for several years now. If you are a small business owner, you will want to learn about this, because it could save you a lot of time and money on web development and website design costs.
Let’s briefly take a look at what normally took place before WordPress came along:
First, you would discuss your requirements with a web developer or designer. After that, the actual ”look and feel” of your site itself had to be discussed and agreed upon. This required time and money being spent with someone with web site design skills going over areas of your web site such as the layout, colours, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be hand-coded with all your elements and codes scripted into your content. All pages were then assembled into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and was functioning how it should (and looking how the client had wanted it to look), was the web site considered as being finished and ready for delivery.
The next stage in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “web templates”. A web template allows presentation elements of the web site to be worked on separately from content on the page. Having templates helped make website creation faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also enabled web development agencies to expand their services to include small businesses with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web site development firms started adopting “template-based” websites, web templates were developed that could offer various custom features, such as colour palettes, the ability to select different styles or elements, and so on.
As web sites and web editor software developed, website templates also began to evolve into website templating ”systems”, letting website owners and web designers control their web site’s visual elements.
Then, a “blogging” tool called WordPress was developed 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:
About WordPress Themes
WordPress themes improve web templating systems even further.
The WP theme system controls every aspect of your web design. It lets you add a “skin” over your site much like a web template system does but it gives you more control over the management, appearance and customization aspects of your template features.
As WordPress has stated in its web 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 the above states, a unique and revolutionary feature of WordPress is that how your website appears to visitors in no way affects how your website is configured internally to handle areas like content management and functionality.
Basically, what this means is that a theme lets you change the appearance of your site as much and as often as you like without modifying your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have set up WP website for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your web site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when you use 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 WordPress theme you like, and then customize the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in seconds, whenever you choose … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WP site without needing any web design knowledge. Just choose a WP theme you like, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your website design and customize elements like headers, layout, style settings and more in less than a few minutes …
Because WordPress is open source software, professional web design companies can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that thousands of high quality WordPress themes can be downloaded by WP users. Themes are normally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE directory of WP themes which allows WordPress users to access thousands of excellent website templates at no cost …
(WordPress.org – WP Themes Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their content online, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider audience of WordPress site owners.
WP themes range from simple-looking, to artsy designs that are quite impressive and would typically cost thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most themes can be purchased fairly cheaply, 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 WP theme galleries containing various examples of great themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits & Advantages
Here are just some of the many benefits of using WordPress themes over using website development tools that require traditional website design:
WP Theme Installation Is Easy And Quick
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your administrator area and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WordPress admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving online community of commercial theme developers who contribute thousands of excellent WordPress Themes available to users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent design across all your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This means you can change themes as often as you like without deleting the underlying content.
- Many WP themes come with built-in features and options that let you easily customize the site’s style, layout and design elements and create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets you upgrade themes to newer theme versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically right within your admin panel.
- WP themes helps you save thousands of dollars on web design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically quite inexpensive.
Responsive WP Themes
Many WP theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. PCs, iPads, smart phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different types of devices. Users can scroll, read and display a site on a range of device platforms without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional browser tools.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website will display correctly on all of your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards and practices of website design and web coding.
Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of WP themes, what themes are, how WordPress themes can help you save money on website development costs, and how WP themes make customizing web sites easy.
To learn where to find great WordPress themes for your website, visit this post: How To Find The Best Free And Paid WordPress Web Templates On The Web.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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