Flexible content publishing applications like the WordPress CMS have truly simplified web design and web development for users.
This is a great thing for entrepreneurial-minded people planning on getting an online presence that they can easily manage themselves.
Before blogging and the introduction of user-friendly CMS software, if you wanted to build a site built for your business, you had to wait until both the website development and web design processes were fully completed. This process could take weeks, even months!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this article, we look at what WordPress themes are, how WP themes can help you save money, and how themes allow you to easily customize your site.
A New Development In Web Design
Businesses, especially small businesses, have benefited from a tremendous revolution in web design that has been going for many years now. If you own a business, you will want to learn more about this, because it could save your business a lot of time and money on web development or web design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s what happened before application like WordPress was introduced:
The first step would be to discuss your project with a website developer or website designer. Then, the actual “web design” would be discussed and agreed upon. This meant time and money being spent with someone with web site design skills going over elements of your web site such as the, colors, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be individually created with all your elements and scripts coded into your page content. All pages were then assembled into a web site using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and worked how it should (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the web site deemed to be completed and ready to go live.
The next step in the evolution of business website design was the introduction of “web templating elements”. A website template allows design elements of the website to be created separately from the page content. Having templates helped to speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also enabled web developers and designers to expand their services to include smaller business clients and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses choosing “template-based” web design services increased, web templates started being introduced that could offer a range of customization options, such as the option to switch colors, styles, layouts
As websites and web editor software developed, website templates also started to evolve into website templating “systems” that enable website owners to manage the visual components of a web site.
And then, WordPress came along and helped to start a new online publishing 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
A WordPress theme expands website templating systems even further.
A WordPress theme controls and unifies every aspect of your site’s design. It lets you add a “skin” over your site similarly to what a website template system does but also provides you with more control over the management, presentation and customization aspects of 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 above, one of the unique features of WordPress is that the way your site looks to visitors on the outside is an entirely different thing from the management of your content.
Basically, what this means is that themes let you modify the look and feel of your site as often as you want without affecting your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have set up WP site for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the site. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when your website is built with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your website built quickly and start with any theme you like, and then completely customize the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in minutes, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WP site with no web coding knowledge necessary. Just choose any theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like header images, page layout, style settings and more in minutes …
Since WordPress is open source software, web design companies anywhere in the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WordPress themes can be downloaded by WP users. WP are normally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE directory of WP themes which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of excellent website templates for free …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider range of users.
WP themes vary from simple-looking, to designs that are quite beautiful and could typically cost many hundreds of dollars to create. Surprisingly, themes are very inexpensive to buy.
You can view a number of theme galleries that include stunning examples of great themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional web template design:
WP Theme Installation Is Easy & Simple
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your admin login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free WordPress theme directory at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing community of commercial web designers who, collectively, contribute thousands of great WordPress 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, like pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This makes it possible to change WP themes as often as you like without affecting your underlying content.
- Many WordPress themes come with additional functionality and options that enable you to easily customize your site’s layout, style and design elements to create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that enables you to upgrade the theme to newer versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically directly from your dashboard.
- Themes allow WP users to save hundreds of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically quite inexpensive.
Responsive Themes
Many WordPress theme designers are now creating “responsive” WordPress themes.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically resize to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. laptops, tablets, mobile phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different types of devices. Users can scroll, read and display your site on different device platforms without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to have installed additional display elements.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site displays well on all of your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of website design coding.
I hope that the above overview has given you a better understanding about themes, what themes are, how themes help your business save money, and how WordPress themes let you easily customize a website.
To learn where to search for the best WP themes for your website, see this page: Finding The Best Free And Premium Responsive WordPress Web Themes On The Net.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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