The introduction of flexible web management tools like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) has effectively simplified web design and web development for users.
This greatly benefits business owners planning to build a website that they can easily manage themselves.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of advanced CMS solutions, if you wanted a web site, you had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were completely done. This could take many weeks, sometimes even months!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this article, we look at what themes are, how themes help your business save money on web development costs, and how WordPress themes help you easily customize your website.
Web Site Design Evolution
More website owners will benefit 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 more about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on web development or website design costs.
Let’s review what typically happened before WordPress was developed:
The first step would be to meet with a website development firm or web site designer for a brief. Next, the actual “web design” itself would be decided upon. This required time and money being spent with someone with web site design skills going over things of your website such as the, colors, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be hand-coded with your design elements and scripts coded around the page content. All of the pages were then assembled together into a web site using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files required to make your website work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and functioned how it should (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the website considered to have been completed and ready for sign off.
The next stage in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “web templates”. Web site templates allow design elements of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. Having ready-made templates helped make the process of website creation faster and resulted in reduced production costs. This also enabled web development agencies to expand their services to include business clients and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of web site development firms using “template-based” web design services increased, templates were introduced that could provide a number of customizable features and options, like the ability to switch colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and web editing applications developed, website templates also began to evolve into web templating “systems” that let users control the design aspects of a website.
Then, a “blogging” software called WordPress came along and helped to start 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:
The WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme drives web templating systems one step further.
The WP theme system controls the design aspects of your website. It lets you add a “skin” to your entire site much like a template system does but it also also provides users with complete control over the management and customization aspects of the template features.
As WordPress puts it …
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 in the quote above, a unique and revolutionary feature of a WordPress theme is that the way your website looks to visitors is kept independent of the way your site is configured internally to handle areas like content management and functionality.
Basically, what this means is that a WordPress theme lets you change the design of your site as much and as often as you want without affecting your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if WordPress website has been configured for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with another 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 with WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your website’s design is done. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any theme you like, and then change the entire look, feel and design of your website in a few minutes, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site with no web code programming skills necessary. Simply pick a theme you like, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your web design and customize elements like headers, layout, styling options and more in minutes …
As WordPress is made available as open source software, web designers can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP templating system.
This means that thousands of great WordPress themes are made available to WP users. Themes are usually distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to access thousands of great themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – Theme Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider range of applications.
Themes vary from minimal-looking, to designs that are visually beautiful and would easily cost thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most themes can be bought quite inexpensively, especially when compared to what it would have cost you if a website designer had to develop it from scratch.
You can view a number of WP theme galleries containing stunning examples of great premium WordPress themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WP Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using WordPress themes over choosing applications that require traditional website design:
Really Easy To Install
WP themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WP admin user account and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large community of professional website designers and design companies who, collectively, make thousands of professional WP Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all of your site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This means you can change themes as often as you like without changing your underlying content of your website.
- Many themes come with 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 needs.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that allows you to upgrade themes to newer versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically within the dashboard.
- Themes lets you save thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally very affordable.
About Responsive WP Themes
Many WordPress theme developers are now developing themes that incorporate “responsive” functionality.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. PCs, tablets, mobile phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different platforms. Users can scroll, read and load a site on different device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to install additional browser tools.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website works across 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 web design.
Hopefully, the above overview has given you a clearer understanding about WordPress themes, what WP themes are, how themes help you and your business save money, and how WordPress themes make customizing web sites easy.
To learn where to find great WP themes for your website or blog, click here:
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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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