Powerful website publishing technologies like WordPress have truly improved web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This is great news for individuals or businesses planning on getting a website that they can manage by themselves.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of user-friendly CMS solutions, if you needed a business web site, you normally had to wait until both the website 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 blog post, you will learn what WP themes are, how WordPress themes save you money on website development costs, and how WP themes let you easily customize your website.
A New Development In Web Site Design
More businesses are benefiting from a tremendous revolution in web design that started many years ago. If you own a business, you will want to know about this, because it could save your business a lot of time and money on website development and website design costs.
Let’s review what happened before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your requirements with a web development agency or designer. After this, the design of your web site would be decided upon. This meant 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 web site then had to be hand-coded with all the elements and scripts coded around the content. The pages were then assembled together into a web site using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file needed to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and functioned how it should (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the web site considered to be finished and ready to go live.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. Web site templates allow the ”look and feel” of the web site to be created separately from the page content. Having template elements helped speed up the web development process and resulted in lowered production costs. This also allowed web site development agencies to work with businesses with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses began using “template-based” websites, web templates started being introduced that could provide clients with different custom features and options, such as the option to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As websites and web editing software developed, website templates also began to transform into website template “systems” that let website owners and web developers customize their website’s visual elements.
Then, WordPress was introduced 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:
About WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme expands web template systems further.
The WP theme system controls and integrates every aspect of your website design. It allows you to add a “skin” over your entire site similarly to what a template system does but it also also provides users with more control over the management, appearance and ability to customize template options.
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 above, one of the unique features of WordPress is that the way your site looks to visitors externally in no way affects how your content is managed.
In simple terms, what this means is that you can modify the design of your website as much and 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 configured your website for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your website. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be completed. You can get your business website built quickly and get started with any WP theme you want, and then customize the entire look, feel and design of your website in mere seconds, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WordPress site with no website code editing skills required. Just choose any theme you want, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your website 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 design companies can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WP users. Themes are normally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great WP themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Free WordPress Theme Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their content online, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider audience of web users.
Themes range from simple-looking, to designs that are quite stunning and would normally cost thousands of dollars to design. Surprisingly, WordPress themes are very inexpensive.
You can see several theme galleries containing many examples of themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Using Themes
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using website building applications that require traditional website design:
Be Up And Running In Very Little Time
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WP dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large online community of professional web developers and development companies who contribute thousands of excellent WP Themes available to WordPress users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent design across all of your site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This means you can swap WordPress themes as often as you want without affecting your site information.
- Many WordPress themes provide additional features and settings that allow you to customize the theme’s style, layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that allows users to update themes to newer versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically inside the site’s administration interface.
- Themes allow WordPress users to save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically very inexpensive.
About Responsive WP Theme Design
Many WP theme developers are now creating WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” functionality.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. computers, tablets, smart phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different platforms. Users can navigate, read and load the site on various device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional browser tools.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your web site will display correctly on your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards of website design and web coding.
I hope the above article has helped you gain a better understanding of WordPress themes, what themes are, how themes help you save money on web development costs, and how WP themes make it easy to customize your site.
In our next article in the article WP newbies on helping you understand features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to find great themes for your website.
***
"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
***