The introduction of powerful web management tools like the WordPress CMS platform has effectively simplified web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This greatly benefits entrepreneurial-minded people thinking about starting an online business presence that is simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Prior to blogging and the introduction of powerful and effective CMS solutions, if you needed to build a professional site built for your business, you typically had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were completely done. This process could take weeks, even months!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this blog post, you will learn what themes are, how WP themes help your business save money on website design costs, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize your WP site.
Evolution In Website Design
More website owners will benefit from a revolution in web design that has been going for a number of years now. If you own a small business, you will want to learn more about this, because it can save your business a lot of time and money on web development or website design costs.
Let’s briefly take a look at how things typically worked in “traditional” website design before WordPress came along:
First, you would discuss your project with a website developer or web designer. Next, the actual “web design” had to be discussed and agreed upon. This required spending time and money with a professional web designer discussing elements of your site like the layout, colors, formats, graphic elements, content, etc.
Every page of your site then had to be individually created with all your design elements and codes scripted into the page content. All the pages were then assembled into a website using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files required to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and was performing the way it was intended to (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the web site considered to be completed and ready for sign off.
The next stage in the evolution of business website design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. A web template allows the design of the web site to be worked on separately from content on the page. The development of ready-made templates helped make the process of developing web sites faster and resulted in lowered production costs. This also enabled web site developers and designers to service smaller businesses with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of web site development firms choosing “template-based” websites increased, templates started being developed that could offer various customization options, such as color palettes, the ability to select different content styles and layouts, and so on.
As websites and website editor tools developed, web templates also began to evolve into website template ”systems”, which allowed website owners to manage their web site’s design components.
Then, a “blogging” software called WordPress came along and helped to kick off 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 expands the concept of a website templating system much further.
A WP theme controls all of the design areas of your web site. It allows you to add a “skin” to your site similarly to what a template system does but it also also provides users with more control over the management and customization aspects of the template settings.
As WordPress describes in its official website …
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 a WordPress theme is that how your site appears to visitors is managed separately from how your website works internally to handle areas like content management and functionality.
In plain English terms, what this means is that you can change the look and feel of your website as much and as often as you want without affecting your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if your website has been configured for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your web site. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your business website built quickly and get started with any theme you want, and then customize the entire look, feel and design of your site in mere minutes, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WP site without needing website code editing skills. Just pick any WP theme you want, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and customize elements like headers, layout, styling options and more in a few seconds …
As WordPress is open source software, website design companies all around the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WordPress themes can be downloaded by WP users. WordPress are usually distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE directory of WordPress themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent web templates at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider range of uses.
Themes vary from functional-looking, to designs that are stunning and would typically cost many hundreds of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most WP themes can be bought fairly inexpensively, especially when compared to what it would have cost you if a website designer had to code it from scratch.
You can view a number of theme galleries that include many examples of great premium themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just some of the many benefits of using WordPress themes over using applications that require traditional web design:
Ready To Use In Minutes
WP themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving community of professional website designers who, collectively, contribute thousands of high quality WordPress Themes available to WordPress users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent look across all your site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This makes it possible to replace WP themes as often as you like without changing the website’s settings.
- Many WP themes provide built-in functionality and settings that let you easily customize the theme’s layout and design properties and create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that allows you to update the theme to newer versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically right inside your admin panel.
- Themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on web design costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally very inexpensive.
Responsive Theme Design
Many WP theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different platforms. Users can scroll, read and load the site on all device platforms without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to install additional display elements.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website displays well across 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 web design and coding.
I hope that this overview has given you a better understanding of WordPress themes, what WordPress themes are, how they help you and your business save money on website design costs, and how WP themes make customizing web sites easy.
To learn where to find the best WP themes for your website, see this post: Finding The Best Free And Premium Responsive WordPress Themes For Your Business Website Or Blog.
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