Advanced web publishing systems like WordPress have truly improved web design and web development for business owners.
This is a great thing for entrepreneurial-minded people wanting a website that is easy to manage.
Before “blogging” and the introduction of powerful CMS solutions, if you wanted to build a website for your business, you typically would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This could take weeks, even many months!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this article, you will learn what themes are, how they save you and your business money on web design costs, and how WP themes help you easily customize your website.
A Revolution In Website Design
More website owners have been benefiting from a tremendous revolution in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a small business owner, you may want to know about this, because it could save you a lot of time and money on web development and web design costs.
Let’s review how things typically worked in “traditional” website development before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your project with a web developer or designer. Next, the actual “web design” itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This required spending time with someone with web site design skills discussing areas of the site like the, colors, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Every page of your site then had to be individually created with all your elements and codes scripted into your page content. The pages were then assembled together into a web site using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files required to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and functioned how it was supposed to (and looking the way a client had imagined it to look), was the web site deemed to be completed and ready for delivery.
Then, website “templates” were introduced”. Web templates allow the presentation of the website to be worked on separately from content on the page. Having ready-made templates helped to make developing web sites faster and resulted in lowered production costs. This also enabled website development companies to expand their services to include smaller business clients and clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses choosing “template-based” websites increased, templates started being designed that could provide clients with expanding customizable features, like color palettes, the ability to specify different content styles, formats, elements, layouts, and so on.
As web sites and web building tools developed, website templates also began to transform into website templating ”systems”, which enabled users to control their site’s design elements.
Then, a “blogging” software called WordPress came along and helped to kick off 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:
The WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme pushes the concept of a website template system further.
The WP theme system controls every aspect of your web design. It lets you add a “skin” over your site much like a web template system does but it gives you more control over the management and customization aspects of your site’s template features.
As described in the official WordPress 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, one of the unique and revolutionary features of the WP theme is that how your website appears to site visitors externally in no way affects the way your website works internally to handle areas like content management and functionality.
Basically, what this means is that you can modify the design of your site 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 your website for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when your website is built using WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any WP theme you like, and then edit the entire look, feel and design of your website in a few minutes, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site with no website code editing knowledge necessary. Just choose a theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your web design and modify elements like headers, page layout, typography and more in a few seconds …
As WordPress is made available as open source software, web designers can create themes specifically for the WP 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 freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of great themes for free …
(WordPress.org – Free WordPress Theme Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider audience of web users.
Themes vary from corporate-looking, to designs that are beautiful and would typically cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most premium themes can be bought very cheaply, especially when compared to what it would have cost you if a web designer had to code it from scratch.
You can see a number of WordPress theme galleries that include various examples of great themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits & Advantages
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional web template design:
Ready To Start Using In Minutes
WP themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin area and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress site’s admin area.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving community of professional web developers who, collectively, make thousands of great WordPress Themes available to WP users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all of your blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This allows you swap themes as often as you like without modifying your underlying content.
- Many WordPress themes provide built-in functionality and settings that let you customize your theme’s style and design elements to create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows users to upgrade the theme to newer versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically right within the admin panel.
- WP themes helps you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on website development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally very inexpensive.
About Responsive WP Theme Design
Many WordPress theme developers are now developing themes that incorporate “responsive” design protocols.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically resize 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 display a site on a range of device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to install additional browser tools.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website will display correctly on your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of web design.
I hope this basic overview has given you a clearer understanding of themes, what themes are, how WP themes help your business save money on website design costs, and how themes allow you to easily customize a site.
To learn where to search for the best WP themes for your website, go here:
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