Powerful content management platforms like the WordPress CMS have truly improved web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This greatly benefits individuals or businesses that want a website that they can fully manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of powerful content management systems, if you wanted to build a professional site built for your business, you typically had to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This process could take many weeks, even many months!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how WP themes help you save money, and how WP themes let you easily customize your WP site.
A Revolution In Web Site Design
Businesses, especially small businesses, are benefiting from a change in web design that has been going for many years now. If you own a small business, you may want to know about this, because it can save you a lot of time and money on website development and website design costs.
Let’s briefly review how things used to work in “traditional” web development before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your requirements with a web site developer or web site designer. Next, the actual “web design” would be decided upon. This involved spending time with someone with web design skills going over areas of your site such as the, colors, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be hand-coded with all the elements and scripts coded into the content. All pages were then assembled into a web site using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and functioned how it should (and looking the way a client had imagined it to look), was the site considered to be finished and ready for sign off.
The next step in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “website templates”. Web site templates allow presentation elements of the website to be created separately from the page content. Having ready-made templates helped to make the process of website creation faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also allowed web site developers to work with business clients and clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses began choosing “template-based” web design services, templates were designed that could provide clients with a range of customization features and options, such as the ability to switch colours, styles, layouts
As websites and website editor software developed, web templates also began to evolve into web template ”systems”, which allowed users to control their website’s visual aspects.
And then, a “blogging” tool called WordPress was developed 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:
About WordPress Themes
WordPress themes push the idea of a web templating system even further.
A WP theme controls all of the design areas of your website. It lets you add a “skin” to your site similarly to what a website template system does but it also also gives you complete control over the management, presentation and ability to customize template settings.
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 the above quote states, a unique and revolutionary feature of WordPress is that how your site displays to site visitors on the outside in no way affects how your website is configured in the backend to handle areas like content management and functionality.
In simple terms, what this means is that you can change the appearance of your website as often as you want without affecting your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have set up your website for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your business website built simply and start with any WordPress theme you want, and customize the entire look, feel and design of your site in mere seconds, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site with no web code editing skills necessary. Simply pick a WP theme you want, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your website design and customize elements like header images, layout, typography and more in a few seconds …
Because WordPress is open source software, commercial website design companies anywhere in the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that loads of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WP users. Themes are usually distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent WordPress themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their digital presence, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
Themes vary from functional-looking, to jaw-dropping designs that are simply spectacular and would easily cost many hundreds of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most premium themes are really inexpensive to purchase.
You can see several WordPress theme galleries containing many examples of great premium WordPress themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over choosing website building applications that require traditional website design:
Really Easy To Install
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress themes directory at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large community of professional theme developers and development companies who contribute thousands of quality WP Themes available to users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all of the blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This makes it possible to swap the “look and feel” of your templates as often as you need without changing the underlying content.
- Many WP themes provide built-in functionality and options that allow you to customize the site’s style, layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that allows users to upgrade the theme to newer theme versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically right inside the admin panel.
- WP themes helps you save thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally quite inexpensive.
Responsive Theme Design
Many theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically resize to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and display a site on different device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to have installed additional browser tools.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website displays well on all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards, practices and techniques of web design and coding.
Hopefully, this article has provided you with a better overview of themes, what themes are, how WP themes help your business save money, and how WordPress themes make customizing websites easy.
To learn where to search for the best WordPress themes for your blog, visit this page: How To Find The Best Free And Paid WordPress Templates Online.
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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