Advanced web management applications like the WordPress CMS have effectively improved web design and web development for website owners.
This greatly benefits individuals or businesses planning to start a website that they can manage themselves.
Prior to blogging and the development of user-friendly content management systems, if you needed to build a professional site for your business, you typically had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were completely done. This process could mean waiting around for weeks, sometimes even months!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this post, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how themes save you money on web development costs, and how themes allow you to easily customize your website.
The Evolution Of Web Site Design
More website owners today will benefit from a great change in website design that has been going for many years now. If you own a business, you will want to know more about this, because it could save your business thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.
In a nutshell, this is how things used to work in “traditional” website development before WordPress came along:
First, you would discuss your requirements with a web developer or designer. Then, the ”look and feel” of the site would be decided upon. This meant spending time with a professional website designer going over areas of your website such as the layout, colors, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be hand-coded with all your elements and codes scripted into the page content. All the pages were then assembled together into a web site using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file needed to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and functioned how it was supposed to (and looking the way the 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 business website design was the introduction of “web templating elements”. Website templates allow the ”look and feel” of the web site to be worked on separately from content on the page. The development of ready-made templates helped make the process of creating websites faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also allowed web development agencies to expand their services to include business clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web site development agencies started using “template-based” web design services, templates started being developed that provided expanding custom features, like colour palettes, the ability to specify different content styles, formats, header, footer and navigation elements, page layouts, etc …
As web sites and web building tools developed, web templates also started to transform into web template ”systems”, which permitted users and web developers to customize the design aspects of a web site.
And then, a “blogging” software called WordPress came along and helped to start a new business 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:
About WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme drives website template systems further.
A WP theme controls all of the design areas of your website. It lets you add a “skin” over your entire site similarly to what a web template system does but it gives you more control over the management, presentation and customization aspects of template settings.
As the official WordPress site explains 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 the above states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of a WP theme is that how your website appears to visitors is kept independent of the way your content is managed.
In simple terms, what this means is that you can modify the design of your site as often as you want without modifying your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if WordPress site has been set up for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when your site is built with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your website built simply and get started with any theme you want, and edit the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in mere minutes, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WordPress site without having website code programming skills. Simply choose a theme you like, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and customize elements like headers, page layout, styling options and more in minutes …
As WordPress is made available as open source software, website design companies anywhere in the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of great WP themes are made available to WordPress users. Themes are usually distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE directory of WordPress themes which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of excellent website templates at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Theme Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their content online, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider range of uses.
WP themes range from minimal-looking, to stylish designs that are breathtaking and would easily cost many hundreds of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most premium themes can be bought very inexpensively, especially when you compare the price to what you would have had to pay if a web designer had to create it from scratch.
You can see several theme galleries that include stunning examples of WordPress themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of WordPress Themes
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over using traditional web template design:
Easy, Quick & Simple To Install
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress theme repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large community of professional website developers and development companies who, collectively, contribute thousands of professional WordPress Themes available to WP users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all of your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This means you can change the “look and feel” of your website as often as you need without modifying the underlying content.
- Many themes come with built-in features and settings that let you easily customize your site’s layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables you to upgrade themes to newer versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically right inside your admin panel.
- Themes helps you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web design costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically quite inexpensive.
Responsive WP Theme Design
Many theme designers are now developing WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different platforms. Users can navigate, read and display a site on different device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser 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 the content and layout of your site works on your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards of web design and web coding.
Hopefully, the above article has provided you with a good overview of themes, what WordPress themes are, how they help you and your business save money, and how WordPress themes make customizing web sites easy.
In our next article on basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to find the best WordPress themes for your website or 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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