The introduction of flexible web site management applications like the WordPress CMS has truly simplified web design and web development for users.
This greatly benefits non-technical users thinking of running a web presence that is relatively simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Prior to blogging and the introduction of advanced CMS technologies, if you wanted to get a professional site built for your business, you normally would have to wait until both the website development and website design processes were fully completed. This process could mean waiting around for many weeks, sometimes even months!
WordPress themes changed all this. In this blog post, we explore what themes are, how they save you money on web development costs, and how themes help you easily customize your site.
A New Development In Web Design
More website owners are benefiting from a tremendous change in website design that has been going for many years now. If you are a business owner, you will want to learn about this, because it can save you a lot of time and money on website development or web design costs.
Let’s briefly go over what happened before CMS systems like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a web developer or website designer for a brief. Then, the actual design itself would be decided upon. This involved time and money being spent with a professional website designer discussing things of your web site such as the, colours, styles, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be hand-coded with your elements and scripts coded into your page content. All the pages were then assembled together into a website using hyperlinks 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 was working the way it was intended to (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the site deemed as being finished and ready for delivery.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. A website template allows ”look and feel” elements of the website to be created separately from the page content. The development of template elements helped to speed up the web site creation process and resulted in lowered production costs. This also allowed website development agencies to work with smaller businesses and clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more website development companies began adopting “template-based” websites, templates started being created to offer expanding customization features and options, like the option to switch colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and website building applications developed, website templates also began evolving into website template ”systems”, which allowed website owners to customize their website’s visual aspects.
Then, a “blogging” application called WordPress came along and helped to start a new 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:
WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme pushes web templating systems even further.
The WordPress theme system controls every aspect of your web design. It allows you to add a “skin” over your entire site similarly to what a template system does but also gives you complete control over the management, presentation and customization of the template options.
As WordPress has described in its official website …
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 states, a unique and revolutionary feature of WordPress is that how your website looks to visitors does not affect your site’s content management aspects.
Basically, what this means is that WP themes let you modify the look and feel of your site as much and as often as you like without touching your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have set up WordPress website for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be completed. You can get your website built simply and get started with any WP theme you like, and then completely change the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in seconds, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site with no website code editing knowledge necessary. Just pick a theme you want, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your site’s design and customize elements like header images, layout, style settings and more in a few seconds …
As WordPress is made available as open source software, website design companies from all over the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of great WP themes are made available to WordPress users. WP are normally distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE directory of WP themes which allows WordPress users to access thousands of great themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – WP Theme Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider audience of web users.
WordPress themes vary from corporate-looking, to designs that are quite beautiful and would normally cost many hundreds of dollars to create. Surprisingly, WordPress themes are fairly inexpensive.
You can view several WordPress theme galleries containing various examples of themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over choosing tools that require traditional web design:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin to your Plugins folder via your WP admin user account and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing online community of professional theme developers and development companies who, collectively, make thousands of high quality WP Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all of the blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This makes it possible to replace WP themes as often as you like without changing your site’s content.
- Many WordPress themes come with additional functionality and settings that enable you to customize your site’s layout, style and design properties to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows users to upgrade themes to newer versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from within the site’s administration interface.
- WP themes helps you save hundreds of dollars on web development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically quite inexpensive.
About Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many theme designers are now developing “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. laptops, tablets, smart phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and load the site on most if not all device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to have installed additional themes.
Note: When downloading 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 all devices, but 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 website design.
Hopefully, this overview has given you a better understanding of themes, what WP themes are, how WordPress themes help you save money on web development costs, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize a WP site.
In the next blog post on basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for the best WP themes for your blog.
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