The development of website management tools like the WordPress CMS platform has effectively improved web design and web development for business users.
This is a great thing for business owners planning on getting a website that is easy to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of powerful and simple content management systems, if you wanted to get a professional website for your business, you typically had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This could mean waiting for many weeks, sometimes even many months!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this post, we explain what themes are, how they save you money on web development costs, and how WP themes help you easily customize your website.
Web Site Design Evolution
More website owners today have been benefiting from an evolution in web design that has been going for many years now. If you own a business, you will want to learn about this, because it could save your business thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
Let’s take a look at how things worked in “traditional” web development before CMS software like WordPress came along:
First, you would discuss your project with a web developer or web designer. Next, the design of the site would be discussed and agreed upon. This required time and money being spent with a professional website designer discussing design elements of the web site like the layout, colours, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be individually created with the elements and scripts coded around your content. The pages were then assembled together into a web site using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file required to make your website work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and performed how it was supposed to (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the web site deemed as being finished and ready to go live.
The next phase in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “website templates”. Web templates allow the presentation of the web site to be created separately from the page content. The development of template elements helped speed up the web site development process and resulted in lowered production costs. This also enabled web site developers to service small businesses and clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of web site development agencies adopting “template-based” websites increased, web templates started being developed that could offer various customizable features and options, such as color palettes, the ability to select different menu styles, formats, header, footer and navigation elements, page layouts, etc …
As websites and web building tools developed, web templates also started evolving into website template “systems” that let users and website developers customize their website’s visual components.
And then, a “blogging” software called WordPress came along and helped to start a new online 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:
About WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme pushes the idea of a website templating system much further.
The WordPress theme system controls all of the design elements of the web site. It lets you add a “skin” over your site much like a website template system does but it gives you more control over the management and customization of your template settings.
As WordPress puts it …
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 WordPress is that how your web site appears to site visitors is a completely separate thing from your site’s content management settings.
In plain English terms, what this means is that you can modify the look and feel of your website as often as you like without modifying your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have configured WordPress 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, plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when your website is powered with WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your site’s web design is done. You can get your business website built simply and get started with any WordPress theme you like, and then completely change the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in a few seconds, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site with no website coding knowledge required. Just choose any theme you want, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and customize elements like headers, layout, style settings and more in a few seconds …
As WordPress is open source software, commercial website designers all around the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WP users. WP are generally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of great website templates at no cost …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider range of applications.
Themes vary from professional-looking, to designs that are simply stunning and would easily cost thousands of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most WP themes can be bought very cheaply, especially when you compare the cost to what you would have been charged if a web designer had to develop it from scratch.
You can see a number of WordPress theme galleries that include many examples of great WordPress themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using traditional web template design:
WP Theme Installation Is Easy, Fast And Simple
WP themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your admin area and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large community of commercial website designers who make thousands of high quality WordPress Themes available to users. Many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent design across all of your site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This allows you swap the “look and feel” of your site as often as you like without deleting your site’s underlying information.
- Many themes provide built-in functionality and settings that let you customize the theme’s layout, style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables you to upgrade themes to a newer theme version without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically from the dashboard.
- Themes lets you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web design costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically very affordable.
Responsive Theme Design
Many theme designers are now creating “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. laptops, tablets, mobile phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different platforms. Users can navigate, read and load a site on most devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional display elements.
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 website will work correctly on all devices, but 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 the above overview has helped you gain a clearer understanding of themes, what WordPress themes are, how themes help you save money, and how themes make customizing sites easy.
To learn where to search for great WordPress themes for your website or blog, see this post: Where To Get The Best Paid And Free Responsive WordPress Web Templates On The Net.
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