Flexible web site management applications like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have effectively improved web design and web development for business users.
This is a great thing for entrepreneurial-minded people thinking of getting a website that is relatively simple and easy to manage.
Before “blogging” and the development of sophisticated content management systems, if you needed to build a professional site for your business, you 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 helped change all this. In this post, we look at what WP themes are, how themes save your business money on web design costs, and how WP themes help you easily customize your WP site.
Revolutionary Website Design
More website owners have been benefiting from an evolution in web design that has been going for several years now. If you are a small business owner, you may want to learn about this, because it can save you a lot of time and money on website development or web design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s how things typically worked in “traditional” web development before applications like WordPress were developed:
First, you would discuss your project with a web site development agency or designer. After this, the actual design of your website itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This required time being spent with someone with web site design skills discussing design elements of the site like the, colours, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with your design elements and codes written into your content. All pages were then assembled into a website using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and functioned how it was intended to (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the web site considered to have been completed and ready to go live.
The next step in the evolution of web design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. Web site templates allow the design of the web site to be worked on separately from content on the page. Having template elements helped make the process of web site development faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also allowed web development firms to work with business clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of web development companies using “template-based” web design services increased, templates were designed that provided expanding custom options, such as color palettes, the ability to pick different styles, formats, header, footer and navigation elements, page layouts, and so on.
As web sites and web editing applications developed, web templates also began transforming into web templating “systems” that allow users to customize the visual components of their site.
Then, WordPress was introduced 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 web templating systems much further.
The WP theme system controls and unifies the design areas of a website. It allows you to add a “skin” to your site much like a template system does but it provides users with complete control over the management and customization of 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 above, a unique and revolutionary feature of a WP theme is that how your website appears to visitors on the outside is kept independent of your site’s content management aspects.
In simple terms, what this means is that a WordPress theme lets you change the design of your site as much and as often as you want without affecting your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built 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 the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your site to be completed. You can get your business website built simply and start with any theme you want, and completely modify the look, feel and design of your website in a few minutes, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site without requiring website design knowledge. Simply pick any theme you like, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like header images, page layout, styling options and more in less than a few minutes …
Because WordPress is open source software, hundreds of website designers anywhere in the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that loads of high quality WP themes are made available to WordPress users. Themes are usually distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – WP Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focused on developing themes for a wider audience of WordPress site owners.
WordPress themes range from functional-looking, to designs that are simply spectacular and could typically cost many hundreds of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most premium themes can be bought fairly inexpensively, especially when you compare the price to what you would have been charged if a web designer had to build it from scratch.
You can see several theme galleries that include stunning examples of great themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of choosing WordPress themes over choosing traditional website design:
Installation Is Easy And Simple
Themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip file that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your administrator section and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free WP theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing online community of professional theme developers and development companies who contribute thousands of excellent WordPress Themes available to WordPress users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all of your site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This allows you replace WordPress themes as often as you want without affecting the underlying content.
- Many themes come with additional functionality and options that let you customize your theme’s layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that lets you upgrade themes to a newer theme version without losing its unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically from your site’s administration interface.
- WP themes helps you save hundreds of dollars on website development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are typically quite inexpensive.
Responsive WordPress Themes
Many theme designers are now creating “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can scroll, read and load a site on most devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional browser elements.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your web site will work correctly across all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of web design and web coding.
Hopefully, this overview has given you a clearer understanding about themes, what WordPress themes are, how themes help you save money on website design costs, and how WP themes make it easy to customize your site.
In our next article in the article series on basic WordPress features, we show you where to find the best WordPress themes for your website.
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