Advanced web publishing applications like the WordPress CMS platform have truly improved web design and web development for web users.
This greatly benefits entrepreneurial-minded people planning to run a digital presence that they can easily manage.
Before blogging and the introduction of sophisticated content management systems, if you needed to get a website for your business, you had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This process could mean waiting for many weeks, sometimes even months!
WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, you will learn what themes are, how they help you save money on web design costs, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize your WP site.
A Revolution In Web Site Design
More businesses today have been benefiting from a change in website design that has been going for many years now. If you own a business, you will want to learn about this, because it could save your business a lot of time and money on website development or website design costs.
Very briefly, here’s what typically happened before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a web developer or web site designer for a brief. After that, the design itself would be decided upon. This involved spending time and money with a professional web designer discussing elements of the web site like the, colours, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be individually created with the design elements and scripts coded around the content. The pages were then assembled into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file required to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and worked how it was intended to (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the web site considered to have been finished and ready to go live.
The next phase in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “website templates”. A web template allows the presentation of the website to be created separately from the page content. The development of templates helped speed up the web creation process and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also allowed web developers to service small business clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses started adopting “template-based” websites, web templates started being developed that offered a range of customization settings, like the ability to choose different colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and web editor applications evolved, web templates also started transforming into web template “systems” that permitted website owners to manage the visual aspects of their website.
And then, 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:
The WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme expands the concept of a website templating system even further.
The WP theme system controls all of the design elements of a website. It allows you to add a “skin” to your entire site similarly to what a web template system does but it provides you with complete control over the management, appearance and ability to customize all template features.
As WordPress has explained in its 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 in the quote above, one of the unique features of WordPress is that the way your website looks to visitors is an entirely separate system from the management of your content.
In simple terms, what this means is that WP themes let you modify the look and feel of your site as often as you like without touching your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have set up WordPress website for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when your site is built using 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 WordPress theme you like, and customize the entire look, feel and design of your site in a few seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site with no web code editing knowledge necessary. Just choose a WordPress theme you want, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like headers, page layout, style settings and more in a few seconds …
Since WordPress is open source software, professional website designers all around the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. WP are normally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WP themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent WordPress themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – Free WordPress Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider range of applications.
WordPress themes vary from functional-looking, to quirky designs that are visually breathtaking and would normally cost thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, WP themes are quite inexpensive.
You can see a number of theme galleries containing many examples of great WordPress themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WP Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just a few of the benefits of choosing WordPress themes over choosing traditional web design:
Easy, Fast & Simple To Install
WordPress themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your WordPress administrator login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large community of professional website developers and development companies who, collectively, contribute thousands of professional WordPress Themes available to users. Many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all the site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This means you can replace themes as often as you like without modifying the settings.
- Many WP themes come with additional built-in functionality and settings that let you customize the theme’s layout and design elements and create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables you to update the theme to a newer theme version without losing its unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically inside your admin panel.
- WP themes helps you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally very inexpensive.
About Responsive WP Theme Design
Many theme developers are now developing themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and load the site on most if not all devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional themes.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site displays well across all of your visitors’ 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 coding.
Hopefully, this article has given you a clearer understanding of themes, what themes are, how WordPress themes can help you and your business save money on web development costs, and how WordPress themes make customizing web sites easy.
To learn where to search for the best themes for your website or blog, click here:
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"Learning WordPress has been a huge stumbling block for me. I've been looking for something that covers absolutely everything but doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Thank you so much ... you have just provided me with what I have been looking for! Truly appreciated!" - Tanya
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