The development of web site management platforms like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) has truly improved web design and web development for business owners.
This is a great thing for businesses planning to start an online business presence that is relatively simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Prior to blogging and the development of powerful content management systems, if you wanted to build a website for your business, you would have to wait until both the website development and web design processes were fully completed. This could take weeks, even many months!
The introduction of WordPress themes changed all this. In this blog post, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how WP themes save you money on web development costs, and how themes allow you to easily customize your website.
A Revolution In Website Design
More website owners today will benefit from a tremendous change in web design that started many years ago. If you are a business owner, you will want to know more about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.
Let’s briefly review what used to happen before a CMS solution like WordPress was developed:
The first step would be to meet with a website development company or designer for a brief. After that, the actual ”look and feel” of the web site itself would be decided upon. This required time being spent with someone with web design skills going over things of your web site such as the layout, colors, formats, graphic elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all your design elements and scripts coded around the content. The pages were then assembled together into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and performed the way it should (and looking the way the client had imagined it to look), was the site considered to have been completed and ready for sign off.
Then, web design “templates” were developed”. A web template allows ”look and feel” elements of the web site to be created separately from content on the page. Having ready-made templates helped to make the process of developing web sites faster and resulted in lowered production costs. This also allowed web developers and designers to service businesses and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses choosing “template-based” web design services increased, web templates were introduced to offer a range of customizable options, like colour palettes, the ability to pick different content styles or content styles, etc …
As web sites and website editor applications evolved, website templates also started to transform into website templating “systems” that enabled website owners to manage the design components of a web site.
Then, a “blogging” software called WordPress was introduced and helped to kick off 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:
The WordPress Theme
WordPress themes expand web template systems further.
A WP theme controls every aspect of your web site design. It lets you add a “skin” to your site similarly to what a website template system does but also gives you complete control over the management, presentation and ability to customize your site’s template features.
As WordPress explains in its official web 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 stated above, one of the unique features of WordPress is that how your site appears to site visitors in no way affects how your content is managed.
In plain English terms, what this means is that a theme lets you modify the look and feel of your site as much and as often as you like without affecting your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if your 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 website. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this important?
Because 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 theme you want, and completely modify the look, feel and design of your site in mere seconds, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without requiring website design skills. Just choose a WP theme you want, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and customize elements like headers, layout, styling options and more in a few seconds …
Since WordPress is distributed as open source software, thousands of website designers anywhere in the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes are made available to WP users. Themes are usually distributed freely under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to access thousands of excellent WP themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
WP themes range from simple-looking, to dynamic designs that are visually spectacular and could easily cost many hundreds of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most premium WordPress themes can be bought very cheaply, especially when compared to what it would have cost you if a web designer had to create it from scratch.
You can view several WordPress theme galleries containing stunning examples of WordPress themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits & Advantages Of Themes
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over using traditional website design:
WP Theme Installation Is Easy And Simple
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing online community of professional web designers and design companies who make thousands of quality WordPress Themes available to WP users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent look across all your blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This makes it possible to swap WP themes as often as you need without deleting your content.
- Many themes provide built-in features and settings that allow you to easily customize your site’s layout and design elements and create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables you to upgrade the theme to newer versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically from your admin panel.
- WordPress themes helps you save thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically quite affordable.
About Responsive WP Theme Design
Many theme developers are now developing WP themes that incorporate “responsive” functionality.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. PCs, iPads, smart phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and load your site on a range of device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser tools.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website will display correctly across all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards and practices of website design.
Hopefully, this basic overview has helped you gain a clearer understanding of WP themes, what themes are, how WP themes can help your business save money, and how themes make it easy to customize a WP site.
In our next blog post on understanding basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for great themes for your blog.
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