The development of content publishing technologies like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) has truly improved web design and web development for web users.
This greatly benefits entrepreneurial-minded people planning to start or build an online presence that they can easily manage by themselves.
Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of powerful and simple CMS applications, if you wanted to build a site for your business, you typically would have to wait until both the website development and web design processes were fully completed. This could take weeks, sometimes even months!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this article, you will learn what WP themes are, how WP themes save your business money on web design costs, and how WP themes allow you to easily customize your site.
Evolution In Website Design
More website owners today will benefit from a revolution in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a small business, you will want to learn about this, because it could save your business a lot of time and money on web development and website design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s how things used to work in “traditional” web development before applications like WordPress were introduced:
First, you would discuss your project with a web developer or designer. Next, the actual “web design” had to be discussed and agreed upon. This meant spending time and money with a professional web site designer discussing areas of the website such as the, colors, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be individually created with all of the elements and codes written into your page content. The pages were then assembled together into a website using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and functioned how it should (and looking how the client had wanted it to look), was the web site deemed to have been completed and ready for sign off.
Then, web design “templates” were introduced”. A web template allows the design of the web site to be created separately from content on the page. The introduction of ready-made templates helped make the process of developing web sites faster and resulted in lowered production costs. This also enabled web development agencies to work with business clients and clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses started adopting “template-based” web design services, web templates started being created that provided a range of customizable settings, like the ability to choose different colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and web editor software evolved, website templates also started evolving into website template “systems” that let users manage their site’s design components.
Then, WordPress was introduced and helped to start a new website revolution …
(WordPress – A Content Publishing Revolution)
To learn more about content management systems and the benefits of the WordPress CMS, see the tutorial below:
About WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme pushes the concept of a web templating system one step further.
A WordPress theme controls and integrates every aspect of your site’s design. It lets you add a “skin” over your site similarly to what a template system does but it gives you complete control over the management, presentation and customization aspects of template features.
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 in the quote above, one of the unique and revolutionary features of WordPress is that the way your website looks to visitors on the outside is controlled separately from the way 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 like without modifying your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have set up WP website for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your web site. 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 spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be done. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any theme you like, and then completely edit the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in a few seconds, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site without having web code programming skills. Just pick a theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your web design and customize elements like header images, page layout, style settings and more in minutes …
Since WordPress is made available as open source software, website design companies can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of great WP themes are made available to WordPress users. WordPress 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 directory of WordPress themes which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of great website templates for free …
(WordPress.org – WP Theme Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider range of uses.
Themes range from bare-looking, to designs that are beautiful and would typically cost many hundreds of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most themes are fairly inexpensive.
You can see a number of WP theme galleries containing stunning examples of great premium WP themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits & Advantages
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over using applications that require traditional website design:
Ready To Start Using In Minutes
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes directory at WordPress.org) directly inside your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing community of professional web developers who contribute thousands of quality WP Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This makes it possible to swap WordPress themes as often as you want without deleting the underlying content of your web site.
- Many WP themes come with additional built-in functionality and options that enable you to easily customize your site’s style, layout and design elements and create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables users to update the theme to newer versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically from your admin panel.
- Themes allow users to save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on website development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally very affordable.
Responsive Themes
Many WordPress theme designers are now developing “responsive” WP themes.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can scroll, read and load your site on a range of device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to install additional browser elements.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your web site displays well on all of your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards and practices of website design coding.
We hope that this basic overview has helped you gain a clearer understanding about WordPress themes, what WP themes are, how they can help you save money on web design costs, and how WordPress themes make customizing web sites easy.
In the next blog post in the article series on helping you understand WP features, we show you where to find the best WP themes for your website or blog.
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