Advanced web site publishing platforms like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have effectively improved web design and web development for website owners.
This is a great thing for individuals or businesses thinking about starting a website that they can fully manage themselves.
Before “blogging” and the introduction of sophisticated CMS solutions, if you needed a website, you had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were fully completed. This process could take many weeks, sometimes even months!
The introduction of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, you will learn what themes are, how they save your business money on website development costs, and how WP themes let you easily customize your website.
A Revolution In Web Site Design
More businesses will benefit from a great change in website design that started a number of years ago. If you are a business owner, you will want to learn about this, because it can save you thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
Let’s briefly take a look at what typically took place before CMS software like WordPress came along:
First, you would discuss your requirements with a web developer or web designer. After this, the actual “web design” would be discussed and agreed upon. This involved time being spent with a professional web designer going over design elements of the site such as the, colours, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be individually created with your elements and codes written into the page content. The pages were then assembled together into a web site using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files required to make your site work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and was functioning the way it was supposed to (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the website deemed to be finished and ready to go live.
The next phase in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “web templating elements”. Web site templates allow the presentation of the website to be created separately from the page content. Having template elements helped make creating web sites faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also enabled web development agencies to expand their services to include small business clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses began choosing “template-based” websites, web templates started being created that provided expanding customizable features, such as colour palettes, the ability to pick different page layouts and elements, etc …
As web sites and website editing tools evolved, web templates also began evolving into web template “systems” that let website owners and web designers control the visual components of a website.
And then, a “blogging” application called WordPress was developed and helped to kick off 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:
The WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme takes web template systems even further.
A WordPress theme controls all of the design aspects of your website. It lets you add a “skin” to your site in a similar way that a website template system does but also provides you with more control over the management, presentation and customization of the template settings.
As stated in 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 stated above, one of the unique and revolutionary features of WordPress is that how your site displays to site visitors is kept independent of your site’s functional aspects (e.g. content management and functionality).
Basically, what this means is that you can modify the look and feel of your website as often as you want without touching your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if your 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 the site. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be completed. You can get your business website built quickly and get started with any WP theme you like, and completely edit the look, feel and design of your site in mere seconds, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WordPress site with no web design skills necessary. Just pick a theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your site’s design and modify elements like headers, page layout, styling options and more in a few seconds …
Since WordPress is distributed as open source software, hundreds of website design companies from all over the world can design themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes are made available to WordPress users. WP are generally distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent WP themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Free Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider audience of web users.
WordPress themes vary from simple-looking, to designs that are quite stunning and would normally cost thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, WordPress themes are fairly inexpensive to purchase.
You can view a number of theme galleries containing various examples of great themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of WordPress Themes
Here are just some of the many benefits of using WordPress themes over using tools that require traditional web template design:
Really Easy To Install
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing community of professional theme designers who contribute thousands of excellent WP Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all of the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This makes it possible to change WP themes as often as you like without disturbing the blog data.
- Many WordPress themes provide additional features and options that let you customize the theme’s style and design elements to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows users to update the theme to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from within the site’s administration interface.
- WordPress themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on website design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically very affordable.
Responsive Theme Design
Many WP theme developers are now creating themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can scroll, read and load the site on most device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to have installed additional browser elements.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site works across all devices, 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 and web coding.
I hope that this post has given you a clearer overview of themes, what WordPress themes are, how they can help your business save money, and how WP themes make customizing web sites easy.
To learn where to search for great WP themes for your blog, click here:
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