Powerful website management systems like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have truly improved web design and web development for non-technical users.
This is great for entrepreneurial-minded people wanting a web presence that they can fully manage.
Before “blogging” and the introduction of user-friendly CMS technologies, if you needed to get a website for your business, you normally would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This could mean waiting for weeks, sometimes even months!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this article, we explain what WordPress themes are, how themes save your business money on website design costs, and how themes let you easily customize your site.
Web Design Evolution
More businesses are benefiting from an evolution in web design that started a number of years ago. If you are a small business owner, you may want to know more about this, because it could save your business thousands of dollars on website development or website design costs.
In a nutshell, this is how things worked in “traditional” web development before CMS software like WordPress came along:
First, you would discuss your project with a web developer or website designer. After this, the actual design of your website had to be discussed and agreed upon. This meant spending time and money with a professional web designer going over areas of the site such as the, colours, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all of the elements and codes written into the page content. All pages were then assembled into a website using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and worked how it was intended to (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the web site deemed as being finished and ready to go live.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. A web template allows the presentation of the web site to be created separately from content on the page. Having templates helped to make creating web sites faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also enabled web site developers and designers to service businesses and clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web development firms began choosing “template-based” websites, templates started being created to offer clients with a range of customizable settings, such as the ability to choose different colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and web building software evolved, website templates also started evolving into web templating ”systems”, letting website owners manage their web site’s design components.
And then, a “blogging” tool called WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new business 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:
The WordPress Theme
WordPress themes expand website templating systems much further.
A WP theme controls the design elements of your web site. It allows you to add a “skin” to your site much like a web template system does but also gives you more control over the management, presentation and customization aspects of template features.
As the official WordPress site explains 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 and revolutionary features of a WP theme is that how your site appears to site visitors on the outside does not affect how your content is managed.
In plain English terms, what this means is that a theme lets you modify the look and feel of your website as much and as often as you like without modifying your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have configured WP site for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your website. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when your site is powered with WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any WP theme you want, and completely change the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in mere minutes, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WordPress site without requiring web code programming knowledge. Simply pick a WP theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like header images, layout, styling options and more in a few seconds …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, thousands of website designers can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes are made available to WP users. WordPress are normally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE directory of WordPress themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of great themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – WP Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider range of users.
Themes range from corporate-looking, to designs that are beautiful and could typically cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, themes can be purchased fairly cheaply, especially when you compare the price to what you would have had to pay if a website designer had to code it from scratch.
You can view a number of WordPress theme galleries that include various examples of WordPress themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over using traditional web template design:
Quick & Easy Installation
WP 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 WordPress theme directory at WordPress.org) directly inside your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing community of commercial web designers and design companies who make thousands of quality WordPress Themes available to users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all of your 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 site as often as you want without deleting your website’s settings.
- Many WordPress themes come with additional built-in functionality and settings that let you customize your site’s style, layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that enables users to update themes to a newer theme version without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically directly from the admin panel.
- WP themes helps you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally very affordable.
About Responsive WP Themes
Many WP theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes for the WordPress platform.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. laptops, iPads, mobile phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and load a site on most if not all device platforms without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to have installed additional themes.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your web site works on your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards, practices and techniques of website design.
I hope this overview has helped you gain a better understanding about WordPress themes, what WordPress themes are, how WP themes help your business save money, and how WP themes make customizing web sites easy.
In the next blog post on basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to find great WordPress themes for your website.
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