Advanced content management tools like WordPress have effectively simplified web design and web development for business owners.
This is terrific news for non-technical users planning to start a website that is relatively simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Before “blogging” and the introduction of user-friendly CMS technologies, if you needed a professional web site, you typically had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This process could mean waiting around for many weeks, even many months!
WordPress themes changed all this. In this blog post, you will learn what themes are, how themes help you and your business save money on website development costs, and how WordPress themes let you easily customize your website.
A New Development In Web Design
More website owners have benefited from a great change in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a business owner, you may want to learn about this, because it can save you a lot of time and money on web development or website design costs.
Let’s briefly go over what happened before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your project with a web site development firm or designer. After this, the actual “web design” had to be discussed and agreed upon. This required time and money being spent with someone with website design skills going over things of your web site such as the layout, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be individually created with all of your design elements and scripts coded into the content. All the pages were then assembled together into a web site using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file required to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and was working how it was supposed to (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the website considered as being completed and ready to go live.
The next step in the evolution of web design was the introduction of “website templates”. Web templates allow the presentation of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. Having ready-made templates helped to make website creation faster and resulted in reduced production costs. This also enabled web site development companies to service business clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses using “template-based” websites increased, web templates were developed that provided clients with expanding customizable features and options, like colour palettes, the ability to select different formats or header, footer and navigation elements, and so on.
As web sites and web building tools developed, web templates also started to evolve into web template ”systems”, letting website owners control the design aspects of their website.
Then, a “blogging” tool called WordPress was introduced and helped to kick off a new digital 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:
The WordPress Theme
WordPress themes drive the concept of a web template system one step further.
The WordPress theme system controls every aspect of your web design. It allows you to add a “skin” to your site similarly to what a website template system does but it gives you more control over the management and ability to customize all template options.
As per 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 the above states, a unique and revolutionary feature of a WordPress theme is that the way your site looks to site visitors is kept independent of the management of your content.
Basically, what this means is that a theme lets you change the design of your website 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 configured your site 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, site and plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your business website built simply and start with any theme you like, and then customize the entire look, feel and design of your site in a few minutes, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site without needing any website code editing knowledge. Just choose a theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like header images, layout, typography and more in a few seconds …
Because WordPress is open source software, web design companies anywhere in the world can design themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WordPress themes can be downloaded by WP users. Themes 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 development team keeps a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of excellent WP themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Free Theme Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider range of uses.
WordPress themes vary from functional-looking, to quirky designs that are quite breathtaking and could easily cost thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most themes are really inexpensive to purchase.
You can view several theme galleries that include stunning examples of themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits And Advantages Of Using WordPress Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using traditional web template design:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
WordPress themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving online community of commercial website developers and development companies who, collectively, contribute thousands of quality WP Themes available to users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This makes it possible to swap themes as often as you need without disturbing your underlying content.
- Many WordPress themes come with additional built-in functionality and settings that let you easily customize the site’s style and design properties and create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that allows users to upgrade the theme to newer versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically within the dashboard.
- Themes allow users to save thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally quite inexpensive.
Responsive Themes
Many theme developers are now developing WP themes that incorporate “responsive” web design.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. PCs, tablets, smart phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different platforms. Users can navigate, read and display the site on most devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to install additional browser tools.
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 across all of your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards and practices of website design.
We hope that this overview has helped you gain a clearer understanding about WordPress themes, what themes are, how they can help your business save money, and how themes make customizing sites easy.
In the next article in our article series on basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to find great WP themes for your website or blog.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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