The introduction of web site publishing tools like the WordPress CMS has effectively simplified web design and web development for non-technical website owners.
This greatly benefits entrepreneurial-minded people planning to run an online presence that they can fully manage.
Prior to blogging and the development of advanced content management systems, if you wanted a site, you would have to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This could mean weeks, even sometimes many months of waiting!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, you will learn what themes are, how themes can help your business save money on web design costs, and how WP themes allow you to easily customize your WordPress site.
Web Site Design Revolution
Businesses, especially small businesses, will benefit from a change in web design that started a number of years ago. If you own a small business, you may want to learn 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 used to work in “traditional” web development before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a web developer or designer for a brief. Next, the “web design” had to be discussed and agreed upon. This required time and money being spent with someone with website design skills discussing things of your web site such as the, colours, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be hand-coded with all your design elements and codes scripted into the content. All of the pages were then assembled into a web site using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file required to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and was performing how it should (and looking the way a client had imagined it to look), was the website considered to be completed and ready to go live.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. A website template allows design elements of the website to be created separately from content on the page. The development of ready-made templates helped to speed up the website creation process and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also enabled website development firms to service business clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses choosing “template-based” web design services increased, web templates were introduced to offer expanding customizable features, like colour palettes, the ability to select different formats or header, footer and navigation elements, and so on.
As web sites and web building applications evolved, website templates also started to transform into website template “systems” that enable website owners and website designers to customize their website’s design elements.
Then, a “blogging” application called WordPress was introduced and helped to kick off 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
WordPress themes expand the concept of a web templating system further.
A WordPress theme controls and unifies every aspect of your web site design. It lets you add a “skin” to your site much like a template system does but it provides users with complete control over the management, presentation and customization of your site’s template options.
According to 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, a unique and revolutionary feature of a WP theme is that how your web site looks to visitors is managed separately from how your content is managed.
In plain English terms, what this means is that a WordPress theme lets you modify the look and feel of your website as often as you like without modifying your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if WP website has been configured for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the site. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain intact, 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 site to be done. You can get your website built quickly and start with any theme you like, and completely modify the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in seconds, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WP site without needing any web coding skills. Just pick a WP theme you want, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and modify elements like header images, layout, typography and more in a few seconds …
Because WordPress is open source software, website designers can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of great WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are usually distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great themes for free …
(WordPress.org – Free Theme Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider range of uses.
WordPress themes range from functional-looking, to designs that are simply breathtaking and would normally cost many hundreds of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most themes are fairly inexpensive.
You can view a number of theme galleries that include various examples of great WP themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing applications that require traditional web template design:
Easy Installation
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 WordPress themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing online community of commercial theme developers who make thousands of great WP Themes available to WP users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all of the site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This allows you replace the “look and feel” of your web site or blog as often as you need without deleting your site content.
- Many WordPress themes come with built-in features and options that allow you to customize the theme’s style, layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that allows users to upgrade the theme to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically right within the admin panel.
- Themes allow users to save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally quite inexpensive.
About Responsive WordPress Themes
Many theme designers are now creating “responsive” themes for the WordPress platform.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and load the site on various device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional display elements.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website will display correctly on all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards and practices of website design and coding.
We hope that this basic overview has given you a clearer understanding about themes, what themes are, how WP themes help your business save money, and how themes make customizing sites easy.
In the next blog post on helping you understand WordPress features, we show you where to find the best WP themes for your blog.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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