Advanced website management tools like the WordPress CMS platform have effectively simplified web design and web development for business users.
This is great news for businesses thinking about building an online business presence that is easy to manage.
Prior to blogging and the development of advanced content management systems, if you needed to build a site for your business, you would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This process could take weeks, even many months!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this blog post, you will learn what WP themes are, how they can help you and your business save money on web development costs, and how WordPress themes allow you to easily customize your site.
Web Site Design Evolution
Businesses, especially small businesses, will benefit from an evolution in website design that has been going for several years now. If you are a business owner, you may want to learn about this, because it could save you a lot of time and money on website development and web design costs.
Very briefly, here’s what used to happen before a CMS application like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a web developer or web designer for a brief. Next, the actual design of your site would be decided upon. This involved spending time with someone with website design skills going over areas of the site such as the, colors, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be individually created with your elements and scripts coded around the content. All pages were then assembled together into a web site using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files required to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and performed the way it was intended to (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the site deemed as being completed and ready to go live.
Then, website “templates” were developed”. A web site template allows the ”look and feel” of the website to be created separately from content on the page. The introduction of ready-made 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 small business clients and clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses began using “template-based” websites, templates started being designed that provided expanding custom features, like the option to choose different colors, styles, layouts
As websites and website editing tools developed, website templates also started to evolve into website template “systems” that permit users and web designers to control their website’s visual components.
And then, a “blogging” software called 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 drives the concept of a website template system much further.
The WP theme system controls all of the design elements of your website. It lets you add a “skin” over your entire site similarly to what a template system does but also gives you more control over the management and ability to customize the site’s 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 stated above, a unique feature of the WP theme is that the way your web site looks to visitors on the outside is managed independently of the management of your content.
Basically, what this means is that you can modify the appearance of your website as much and as often as you want without touching your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have configured your website for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because with WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your site to be done. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any theme you like, and completely modify the look, feel and design of your website in minutes, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without needing any web code development knowledge. Just choose a theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your site’s design and customize elements like header images, layout, styling options and more in a few seconds …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, commercial website design companies can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of great WP themes are made available to WP users. WP are generally distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of great website templates at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Theme Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider range of applications.
WordPress themes vary from simple-looking, to elegant designs that are quite stunning and would easily cost many hundreds of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most themes can be bought fairly cheaply, especially when you compare the price to what you would have had to pay if a web designer had to code it from scratch.
You can see a number of theme galleries containing many examples of great premium WordPress themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using traditional web template design:
Installation Is Easy And Simple
WP themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugin 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 within your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large community of commercial web designers who, collectively, make thousands of great WordPress Themes available to users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This means you can replace the “look and feel” of your website as often as you want without affecting your underlying content.
- Many themes provide additional features and options that let you easily customize your theme’s layout, style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables you to upgrade themes to newer versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically from your dashboard.
- WordPress themes helps you save hundreds of dollars on web development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally quite affordable.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many WP theme designers are now creating themes that incorporate “responsive” web design.
A responsive theme allows 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 scroll, read and display your site on different devices without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional browser elements.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website will display correctly on all 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 web design coding.
I hope this post has given you a clearer understanding of WordPress themes, what WordPress themes are, how WordPress themes can help you and your business save money, and how WP themes make customizing web sites easy.
In our next blog post on understanding basic WordPress features, we show you where to find the best themes for your website.
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