Powerful website management technologies like the WordPress CMS have effectively improved web design and web development for non-technical website owners.
This is fantastic news for entrepreneurial-minded people planning to start or build a digital presence that is relatively simple and easy to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of easy-to-use CMS tools, if you needed to build a professional web site for your business, you would have to wait until both the website development and web design processes were fully completed. This process could take many weeks, sometimes even many months!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this blog post, you will learn what themes are, how WordPress themes save you and your business money on website design costs, and how themes help you easily customize your website.
Web Design Revolution
Businesses are benefiting from a revolutionary change in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a business, you may want to learn more about this, because it could save your business thousands of dollars on web development or web design costs.
Let’s briefly review how things used to work in “traditional” web design before a CMS software like WordPress was developed:
The first step would be to discuss your project with a website developer or designer. After that, the “web design” itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This meant spending time with a professional web site designer going over areas of the web site like the, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be hand-coded with all the design elements and scripts coded into the content. All the pages were then assembled into a web site using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file required to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and worked the way it was supposed to (and looking the way a client had imagined it to look), was the website considered as being completed and ready to go live.
The next phase in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “web templates”. Website templates allow the design of the web site to be created separately from the page content. Having templates helped speed up the website creation process and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed web developers and designers to expand their services to include businesses with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses using “template-based” websites increased, templates started being designed that could offer different customization settings, such as the ability to choose different colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and web editing tools evolved, web templates also started to transform into website templating “systems” that allow website owners and website designers to manage the visual aspects of a site.
And then, a “blogging” software called WordPress came along and helped to start 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:
About WordPress Themes
WordPress themes take the idea of a website template system further.
The WordPress theme system controls every aspect of your web site design. It allows you to add a “skin” over your site much like a web template system does but also gives you complete control over the management and customization of all template options.
As WordPress explains in its web 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, a unique feature of WordPress is that how your site displays to visitors externally is managed separately from your site’s functionality and content management.
In plain English terms, what this means is that themes let you change the appearance of your site as often as you want without touching your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have set up your website for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
This is important. 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 simply and get started with any WP theme you want, and modify the entire look, feel and design of your site in mere minutes, whenever you choose … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WordPress site with no web coding knowledge necessary. Simply choose any theme you like, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and customize elements like header images, layout, style settings and more in minutes …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, website design companies all around the world can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. WordPress are generally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great WordPress themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider range of uses.
Themes range from professional-looking, to designs that are visually breathtaking and could normally cost thousands of dollars to design. Surprisingly, WP themes are quite inexpensive.
You can view several WP theme galleries that include many examples of great themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over choosing tools that require traditional web design:
Ready To Use In Very Little Time
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip folder containing the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large online community of commercial theme designers and design companies who, collectively, make thousands of high quality WordPress Themes available to WP users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all of the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This means you can replace the “look and feel” of your website as often as you like without disturbing your site’s underlying information.
- Many themes come with additional built-in functionality and options that enable you to easily customize your site’s layout and design elements and create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets you upgrade 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 the dashboard.
- Themes allow WP users to save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on website development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally very affordable.
Responsive Themes
Many theme designers are now developing “responsive” WP themes.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. laptops, iPads, cell phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and load the site on different device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to have installed additional display elements.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will work correctly on your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of web design and web coding.
We hope this basic overview has helped you gain a better understanding about themes, what themes are, how they help you save money on web design costs, and how WP themes make customizing websites easy.
To learn where to search for the best themes for your website, see this post: Finding The Best Paid And Free Responsive WordPress Templates Online.
***
"Your training is the best in the world! It is simple, yet detailed, direct, understandable, memorable, and complete." Andrea Adams, FinancialJourney.org
***