The development of flexible content publishing systems like WordPress has effectively simplified web design and web development for web users.
This is a great thing for non-technical users planning on getting a website that is relatively easy to manage.
Before blogging and the introduction of user-friendly content management systems, if you needed to build a site built for your business, you typically would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This process could mean waiting around for many weeks, even months!
The introduction of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this blog post, we take a look at what themes are, how WordPress themes can help you and your business save money on website development costs, and how themes allow you to easily customize your WordPress site.
Website Design Revolution
Businesses have been benefiting from a tremendous change in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a business, you will want to know more about this, because it can save you thousands of dollars on web development or web design costs.
In a nutshell, this is what typically took place before WordPress was introduced:
The first step would be to meet with a web developer or website designer for a brief. Then, the actual “web design” had to be discussed and agreed upon. This involved spending time with someone with web site design skills discussing areas of your website like the, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be hand-coded with your design elements and scripts coded into your content. The pages were then assembled together into a web site using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files needed to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and worked how it was intended to (and looking the way the client had wanted it to look), was the site deemed to have been completed and ready for sign off.
The next step in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “web templates”. Website templates allow ”look and feel” elements of the website to be worked on separately from content on the page. Having template elements helped make web site development faster and resulted in lowered production costs. This also allowed web designers to work with smaller business clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web development firms started adopting “template-based” web design services, templates started being introduced to provide clients with different customization features and options, like color palettes, the ability to select different menu styles, formats, header, footer and navigation elements, layouts, and so on.
As websites and website building software evolved, web templates also began evolving into web templating ”systems”, letting users and website designers control the design components of their web site.
Then, a “blogging” software called WordPress was developed and helped to kick off a new web 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
WordPress themes improve the idea of a web template system one step further.
A WP theme controls and unifies every aspect of your site’s design. It allows you to add a “skin” over your site similarly to what a template system does but it also also gives you complete control over the management and customization of template features.
As the official WordPress site explains …
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 feature of WordPress is that how your website displays to site visitors on the outside is kept independent of how your content is managed.
Basically, what this means is that themes let you change the look and feel of your website as often as you want without modifying your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if WP website has been configured for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your 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 intact, but your site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when your site is built using WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be completed. You can get your business website built simply and get started with any theme you like, and then completely change the look, feel and design of your site in minutes, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without requiring web design skills. Simply pick a WP theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your website design and modify elements like headers, page layout, styling options and more in minutes …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, professional web design companies from all over the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. WP are normally 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 keeps a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great web templates completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider range of applications.
Themes vary from minimal-looking, to designs that are beautiful and could normally cost many hundreds of dollars to create. Surprisingly, WordPress themes are really inexpensive to buy.
You can see several theme galleries that include various examples of WordPress themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WP Themes – Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of choosing WordPress themes over using traditional website design:
Ready To Go To Work In Minutes
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip folder containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your admin login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large online community of professional theme designers and design companies who, collectively, contribute thousands of high quality WP Themes available to users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all of your site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This makes it possible to replace themes as often as you like without modifying the underlying content.
- Many themes come with built-in features and settings that allow you to easily customize your theme’s style, layout and design elements and create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables users to update themes to newer theme versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically directly from within your dashboard.
- Themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on website development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically quite inexpensive.
Responsive Themes
Many WordPress theme designers are now developing WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” web design.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and display the site on different device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional display elements.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website displays well on all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of website design and coding.
Hopefully, the above overview has given you a better understanding about themes, what WordPress themes are, how they help you and your business save money on website design costs, and how WP themes make it easy to customize your website.
To learn where to search for great WordPress themes for your website, click here:
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