The development of powerful content publishing systems like the WordPress CMS platform has effectively improved web design and web development for users.
This is great for individuals or businesses wanting to start a website that is relatively simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Before “blogging” and the development of user-friendly content management systems, if you wanted to get a website built for your business, you normally had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were completely done. This process could mean waiting around for many weeks, even months!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, you will learn what themes are, how WordPress themes help you and your business save money, and how WordPress themes help you easily customize your site.
Website Design Revolution
More website owners will benefit from a great change in web design that has been going for several years now. If you are a small business owner, you will want to learn about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on website development or web design costs.
In a nutshell, this is how things used to work in “traditional” website design before WordPress was developed:
The first step would be to discuss your requirements with a web site development firm or website designer. Then, the actual design would be discussed and agreed upon. This meant time and money being spent with someone with website design skills discussing things of your website like the, colours, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Every page of your site then had to be hand-coded with all of your design elements and codes written into your content. All of the pages were then assembled together into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files required to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and functioned how it was supposed to (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the website considered as being finished and ready to go live.
The next stage in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. A web site template allows ”look and feel” elements of the web site to be worked on separately from content on the page. Having template elements helped make developing web sites faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also enabled web development firms to work with smaller businesses and clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses started choosing “template-based” websites, templates started being designed that could provide clients with different custom options, such as the option to switch colours, styles, layouts
As websites and web building applications evolved, web templates also began to transform into web templating ”systems”, letting website owners control their web site’s design components.
Then, a “blogging” application 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:
WordPress Themes
WordPress themes drive the concept of a website template system much further.
The WP theme system controls all of the design aspects of the web site. It lets you add a “skin” to your entire site in a similar way that a template system does but also provides users with more control over the management and ability to customize all template settings.
As the official WordPress site explains …
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 quote states, a unique and revolutionary feature of WordPress is that the way your web site looks to visitors does not affect your site’s content management aspects.
Basically, what this means is that a WP theme lets you modify the look and feel of your website 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 set up for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this great news for businesses?
Because with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your site’s web design is done. You can get your website built quickly and start with any WordPress theme you want, and then completely edit the look, feel and design of your website in a few seconds, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site with no web design knowledge necessary. Just pick any theme you like, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your website design and modify elements like header images, layout, style settings and more with just a few mouse clicks …
Because WordPress is made available as open source software, commercial website design companies anywhere in the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that thousands of high quality WordPress themes are made available to WP users. WP are usually distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of excellent themes for free …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their digital presence, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider audience of web users.
Themes vary from simple-looking, to designs that are simply beautiful and could easily cost thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most WP themes are really inexpensive to purchase.
You can see several theme galleries containing stunning examples of great WP themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just some of the many benefits of choosing WordPress themes over using applications that require traditional website design:
Ready To Use In Very Little Time
WordPress themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing community of commercial web designers and design companies who make thousands of fantastic WP Themes available to WP users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all your site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This makes it possible to change the “look and feel” of your site as often as you like without affecting your underlying content of your website.
- Many themes provide additional built-in functionality and options that allow you to easily customize the theme’s style, layout and design properties and create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets users update the theme to a newer theme version without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically directly from within the admin panel.
- WP themes allow users to save thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally very affordable.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many WordPress theme designers are now creating WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” functionality.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and load your site on different devices without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional browser elements.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website will work correctly on all of your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of web design and web coding.
We hope this basic overview has helped you gain a better understanding of WordPress themes, what themes are, how themes can help you and your business save money on web design costs, and how WordPress themes make customizing websites easy.
In the next blog post on basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for the best themes for your website or blog.
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