The introduction of powerful web site publishing tools like WordPress has effectively simplified web design and web development for website owners.
This greatly benefits businesses planning to start a web presence that they can manage.
Before “blogging” and the introduction of user-friendly CMS solutions, if you needed to get a web site built for your business, you typically would have to wait until both the website development and web design processes were fully completed. This could take many weeks, sometimes even months!
The development of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this blog post, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how themes save you and your business money on website development costs, and how WordPress themes help you easily customize your site.
The Evolution Of Web Design
Website owners are benefiting from a tremendous change in web design that started several years ago. If you are a small business owner, you may want to know more about this, because it could save you a lot of time and money on web development or web design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s how things worked in “traditional” web development before WordPress were developed:
The first step would be to meet with a website development agency or web site designer for a brief. Next, the actual design would be discussed and agreed upon. This involved time being spent with someone with website design skills going over design elements of your site like the layout, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your site then had to be individually created with all your elements and scripts coded into the content. All of the pages were then assembled into a website using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your website work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and functioned how it should (and looking the way the client had wanted it to look), was the web site considered to be completed and ready to go live.
The next stage in the evolution of web design was the introduction of “web templates”. A web template allows presentation elements of the web site to be created separately from the page content. Having templates helped to speed up the web site development process and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also allowed web site development companies to expand their services to include businesses and clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses started adopting “template-based” web design services, templates were created that offered clients with a range of customizable features and options, like colour palettes, the ability to specify different content styles, formats, elements, layouts, etc …
As websites and web editing software evolved, web templates also started evolving into website templating “systems” that permitted website owners to customize their site’s visual elements.
Then, a “blogging” software called 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:
About WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme pushes the idea of a website templating system one step further.
A WordPress theme controls and integrates every aspect of your website design. It lets you add a “skin” over your entire site much like a web template system does but it also also gives you complete control over the management and ability to customize template options.
As the official WordPress site explains …
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 WordPress is that the way your web site looks to site visitors in no way affects the management of your content.
In simple terms, what this means is that you can modify the design of your site as much and as often as you like without affecting your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if your site has been configured for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any WP theme you like, and completely change the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in a few seconds, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WP site with no website code development skills required. Simply choose a theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like header images, page layout, typography and more in less than a few minutes …
As WordPress is made available as open source software, hundreds of website design companies anywhere in the world can design themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP template system.
This means that loads of great WordPress themes are made available to WordPress users. Themes are usually distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now focused on developing themes for a wider range of users.
Themes vary from corporate-looking, to designs that are visually impressive and could normally cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most WP themes are very inexpensive to buy.
You can view several theme galleries containing various examples of great premium themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of WP Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over choosing web development tools that require traditional web template design:
Installation Is Easy And Simple
Themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip file that contains the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your admin account and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving online community of professional web developers who contribute thousands of great WordPress Themes available to users. Many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all the blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This makes it possible to replace themes as often as you like without disturbing your site’s data.
- Many WordPress themes come with additional built-in functionality and options that let you customize the theme’s style and design elements to create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows you to update themes to newer versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically inside your site’s administration interface.
- Themes lets you save thousands of dollars on website development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically very affordable.
About Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many WP 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. computers, tablets, mobile phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and load the site on different device platforms without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to have installed additional display elements.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site displays well on your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards and practices of website design and coding.
We hope that this overview has helped you gain a better understanding of WordPress themes, what themes are, how they help you and your business save money, and how WordPress themes let you easily customize a web site.
In the next blog post on understanding basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to find great themes for your website.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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