The development of content management applications like WordPress has truly improved web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This greatly benefits entrepreneurial-minded people wanting a web presence that is easy to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of sophisticated content management systems, if you wanted a professional site, you normally 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 introduction of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this blog post, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how themes save you money on website design costs, and how themes allow you to easily customize your website.
A New Development In Web Site Design
More website owners will benefit from a tremendous change in website design that has been going for a number of years now. If you own a small business, you will want to learn about this, because it can save your business a lot of time and money on web development and website design costs.
Let’s review how things used to work in “traditional” website development before WordPress was developed:
The first step would be to meet with a website development agency or designer for a brief. After that, the “web design” itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This required time being spent with someone with website design skills discussing areas of your site such as the, colors, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your site then had to be individually created with your design 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, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and was functioning how it should (and looking the way a client had wanted it to look), was the site considered as being finished and ready for delivery.
The next stage in the evolution of web design was the introduction of “web templating elements”. Web site templates allow the presentation of the web site to be worked on separately from content on the page. The introduction of templates helped make the process of web site creation faster and resulted in lowered production costs. This also allowed web developers and designers to service businesses with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more website development firms started using “template-based” websites, templates were developed that provided clients with different customizable features, such as color palettes, the ability to select different content styles, formats, elements, layouts, etc …
As websites and web editor software evolved, website templates also began to transform into website templating ”systems”, which enabled users to manage their website’s design elements.
And then, WordPress came along and helped to start 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 expands the concept of a website template system one step further.
The WP theme system controls all of the design aspects of your website. It allows you to add a “skin” to your site similarly to what a template system does but also provides you with more control over the management and customization aspects of all template settings.
As WordPress puts 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 stated above, one of the unique and revolutionary features of a WordPress theme is that the way your site looks to site visitors is an entirely separate thing from the management of your content.
In simple terms, what this means is that you can change the appearance of your website as often as you like without touching your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if WordPress website has been configured for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your web site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this great for small businesses?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your website’s design is done. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any theme you want, and completely edit the look, feel and design of your site in mere seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WP site with no web design knowledge necessary. Simply pick any WP theme you like, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and customize elements like header images, page layout, typography and more in a few seconds …
Because WordPress is distributed as open source software, hundreds of web designers from all over the world can design themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of great WordPress themes are made available to WP users. WP are usually distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE directory of WordPress themes which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of great WordPress themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Theme Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their digital presence, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider range of applications.
WP themes vary from corporate-looking, to exciting designs that are quite beautiful and would easily cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most WordPress themes can be bought quite inexpensively, especially when compared to what it would have cost you if a website designer had to build it from scratch.
You can view a number of theme galleries containing stunning examples of WordPress themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits & Advantages Of WordPress Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over choosing tools that require traditional web design:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
WordPress themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress administrator section and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving online community of commercial website designers who make thousands of fantastic WordPress Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent design across all of the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This makes it possible to swap WP themes as often as you want without deleting your website’s settings.
- Many themes come with built-in features and settings that allow you to customize your 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 lets you update the theme to a newer theme version without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically right inside the site’s administration interface.
- WordPress themes allow users to save hundreds of dollars on web design costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally very inexpensive.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many WP theme developers are now developing WP themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically resize to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and display a site on a range of device browsers 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 the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will work correctly across your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of web design and coding.
We hope that the above article has given you a clearer understanding of WordPress themes, what themes are, how WP themes help you and your business save money on website development costs, and how WordPress themes make customizing websites easy.
To learn where to find the best WP themes for your blog, see this page: Finding The Best Premium And Free WordPress Web Templates For Your Business.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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