Powerful content management applications like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have truly simplified web design and web development for website owners.
This is a great thing for non-technical users wanting a website that is easy to manage.
Prior to blogging and the introduction of user-friendly CMS solutions, if you needed to build a professional site built for your business, you would have to wait until both the website development and web design processes were completely done. This could take many weeks, even months!
The development of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this post, we will explore what WordPress themes are, how they help you and your business save money, and how WP themes allow you to easily customize your WordPress site.
Web Design Evolution
More businesses today are benefiting from a tremendous revolution in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a small business, you will want to know more about this, because it can save your business a lot of time and money on web development and website design costs.
Let’s briefly go over how things typically worked in “traditional” web design before WordPress were introduced:
First, you would meet with a website developer or web site designer for a brief. After that, the design itself would be decided upon. This meant spending time and money with a professional website designer discussing elements of the website such as the layout, colours, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your site then had to be hand-coded with the elements and scripts coded into the 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 all other files required to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and performed how it was supposed to (and looking the way a client had wanted it to look), was the web site considered to be completed and ready for delivery.
Then, website “templates” came along”. Web site templates allow the ”look and feel” of the website to be worked on separately from the page content. Having templates helped to make site development faster and resulted in reduced production costs. This also enabled web site development firms to expand their services to include small business clients and clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses using “template-based” websites increased, web templates were developed to offer clients with a number of customizable settings, such as the ability to switch colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and website building software developed, website templates also started to evolve into website template ”systems”, which permitted website owners and website developers to manage their website’s design elements.
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 drives the concept of a website template system one step further.
A WordPress theme controls every aspect of your web site design. It allows you to add a “skin” to your entire site in a similar way that a template system does but it gives you complete control over the management and customization of all template options.
As per 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 the above quote states, one of the unique features of a WP theme is that the way your site appears to visitors externally is a completely separate thing from the way your site works internally to handle areas like content management and functionality.
Basically, what this means is that you can change the appearance of your website as much and as often as you like without modifying your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if your site has been configured for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because when your site is built with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your site’s web design is done. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any WP theme you like, and change the entire look, feel and design of your site in a few minutes, whenever you choose … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without requiring any web code development skills. Simply choose a WP theme you want, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and modify elements like headers, page layout, styling options and more with just a few mouse clicks …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, thousands of website design companies can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP template system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are normally distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of great themes for free …
(WordPress.org – Free Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
WP themes vary from bare-looking, to designs that are simply impressive and could normally cost many hundreds of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most themes are very inexpensive to purchase.
You can view a number of WordPress theme galleries that include many examples of WP themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits & Advantages
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over choosing traditional website design:
Ready To Start Using In Minutes
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing community of professional theme developers who, collectively, make thousands of excellent WP Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent design across all the blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This allows you replace themes as often as you want without modifying your underlying content of your web site.
- Many WP themes provide additional built-in functionality and settings that allow you to customize the theme’s layout, style and design properties to create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that allows you to upgrade themes to newer theme versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically within the dashboard.
- Themes helps you save thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally quite inexpensive.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many theme designers are now developing “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and display a site on different device platforms without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to install additional browser tools.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website will work correctly across all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of website design and web coding.
Hopefully, this article has helped you gain a clearer understanding of WP themes, what themes are, how themes can help you save money, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize a web site.
In the next article on understanding basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to find great WP themes for your website.
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