Powerful content management systems like WordPress have truly improved web design and web development for business users.
This is a great thing for business owners planning to start a website that they can easily manage.
Before “blogging” and the development of advanced content management systems, if you wanted a web site, you typically had to wait until both the website development and web design processes were fully completed. This could mean weeks, sometimes even many months of waiting around!
WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, we will explore what themes are, how WordPress themes save you and your business money on web design costs, and how WP themes make it easy to customize your website.
Web Site Design Evolution
More businesses today are benefiting from a great change in web design that has been going for several years now. If you are a small business owner, you will want to learn about this, because it could save you a lot of time and money on web development and web design costs.
Very briefly, here’s how things used to work in “traditional” web design before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your requirements with a web developer or web designer. Next, the design would be discussed and agreed upon. This meant time being spent with someone with web design skills discussing areas of the website such as the layout, colors, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be individually created with all of your design elements and scripts coded into your content. All of the pages were then assembled into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and was working how it was supposed to (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the web site considered to be finished and ready to go live.
The next stage in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “web templating elements”. A web site template allows the design of the web site to be created separately from content on the page. Having template elements helped to make the process of website development faster and resulted in lowered production costs. This also enabled web developers and designers to work with smaller businesses with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of web site development agencies adopting “template-based” websites increased, web templates were created to provide clients with a range of customization features and options, such as the option to switch colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and website editor tools developed, website templates also began transforming into web template “systems” that let website owners and website designers manage the visual components of a site.
And then, WordPress came along and helped to start a new web 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 the idea of a web template system even further.
A WordPress theme controls and integrates the design areas of your web site. It lets you add a “skin” over your entire site similarly to what a web template system does but it provides users with complete control over the management, appearance and ability to customize all template features.
As the official WordPress site states …
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 and revolutionary feature of WordPress is that how your web site displays to visitors externally in no way affects your site’s functionality and content management.
In plain English terms, what this means is that you can change the look and feel of your site as much and as often as you like without touching your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have configured WordPress website for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this important?
Because when your site is built with WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your site to be completed. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any WordPress theme you want, and then completely change the look, feel and design of your website in seconds, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site without requiring web coding knowledge. Simply choose any theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your web design and customize elements like header images, layout, style settings and more in a few seconds …
Since WordPress is distributed as open source software, hundreds of website designers can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP template system.
This means that loads of great WordPress themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are generally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE directory of WP themes which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of excellent web templates at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Theme Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their content online, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider range of applications.
Themes range from functional-looking, to designs that are simply stunning and could normally cost thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, themes are very inexpensive.
You can see a number of WP theme galleries containing stunning examples of great premium themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Using WordPress Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using traditional website design:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large community of professional web designers who contribute thousands of great-looking, high quality WP Themes available to WP users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all of your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This allows you change themes as often as you want without affecting the content.
- Many WP themes provide additional built-in functionality and settings that let you easily customize the theme’s layout, style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that enables you to update the theme to newer versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically directly from within the admin panel.
- WordPress themes allow users to save thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally quite inexpensive.
Responsive WP Themes
Many theme developers are now developing “responsive” WP themes.
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. PCs, iPads, smart phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different platforms. Users can scroll, read and load the site on all device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional browser tools.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will display correctly across your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of website design and coding.
We hope this article has provided you with a clearer understanding of themes, what themes are, how WordPress themes can help you save money on website development costs, and how WP themes make customizing web sites easy.
In the next blog post in the article WP beginners on basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to find great WordPress themes for your website.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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