Flexible website management applications like the WordPress CMS have effectively improved web design and web development for non-technical business owners.
This is great for entrepreneurial-minded people thinking about running a website that they can easily manage by themselves.
Before blogging and the development of sophisticated content management systems, if you needed a business website, you normally would have to wait until both the web development and website design processes were completely done. This process could mean weeks, sometimes even months of waiting!
The introduction of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this blog post, you will learn what themes are, how they save your business money on website design costs, and how themes let you easily customize your site.
Website Design Evolution
Businesses, especially small businesses, have benefited from a tremendous change in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a business owner, you will want to learn more about this, because it can save you a lot of time and money on web development or web design costs.
Very briefly, this is how things worked in “traditional” website development before CMS solutions like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a web developer or designer for a brief. Then, the design of your website itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This meant spending time and money with a professional web site designer going over things of the website such as the, colors, styles, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be individually created with all the design elements and codes scripted into the content. All of the pages were then assembled together into a web site using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file required to make your website work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and worked how it was intended to (and looking the way the client had imagined it to look), was the website considered to have been completed and ready for delivery.
The next step in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. Web templates allow the design of the web site to be created separately from the page content. The development of template elements helped to make the process of creating websites faster and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed website development agencies to expand their services to include small businesses with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses adopting “template-based” websites increased, templates were designed that could provide clients with different customizable features, such as the ability to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and website editor tools evolved, web templates also started evolving into web template ”systems”, letting users and website designers customize the visual components of their website.
Then, 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:
About WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme takes web template systems even further.
The WordPress theme system controls every aspect of your website design. It lets you add a “skin” to your entire site much like a template system does but it provides users with more control over the management, appearance and customization of all template options.
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 the above states, one of the unique features of WordPress is that the way your website looks to site visitors on the outside is managed independently of your site’s content management aspects.
In simple terms, what this means is that a WordPress theme lets you change the look and feel of your site as much and as often as you want without affecting your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if WordPress site has been set up 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 huge! Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your business website built quickly and get started with any WordPress theme you want, and completely change the look, feel and design of your website in mere seconds, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WordPress site with no web coding skills required. Just pick a theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your entire site’s web design and customize elements like headers, layout, style settings and more with just a few mouse clicks …
Because WordPress is made available as open source software, website design companies all around the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are generally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent web templates at no cost …
(WordPress.org – WP Theme Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their digital presence, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider audience of web users.
WP themes vary from minimal-looking, to clever designs that are stunning and could easily cost many hundreds of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most premium themes are really inexpensive.
You can see several theme galleries containing stunning examples of great premium themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of WordPress Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using web building applications that require traditional web design:
Easy Installation
WP themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your admin user account and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving community of commercial website developers and development companies who, collectively, make thousands of professional WP Themes available to users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all the blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This makes it possible to change the “look and feel” of your web site or blog as often as you need without deleting the site’s settings.
- Many WP themes come with additional built-in features and options that allow you to easily customize the site’s layout, style 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 customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically directly from the site’s administration interface.
- Themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on website development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally quite affordable.
Responsive Theme Design
Many WP theme designers are now developing “responsive” WordPress themes.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and display your site on most if not all device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to have installed additional browser tools.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will work correctly across all of your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards and practices of website design and coding.
Hopefully, the above overview has helped you gain a better understanding of themes, what WordPress themes are, how themes can help you and your business save money on website development costs, and how themes make it easy to customize your website.
To learn where to find great WordPress themes for your blog, click here:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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