Flexible web site publishing tools like the WordPress CMS have truly simplified web design and web development for business owners.
This is a great thing for non-technical users planning to start a website that they can easily manage themselves.
Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of easy-to-use content management systems, if you needed to build a professional web site built for your business, you had to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This could mean waiting for weeks, even months!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this blog post, we explain what WordPress themes are, how they save your business money on website development costs, and how WP themes allow you to easily customize your WordPress site.
A Revolution In Website Design
Businesses, especially small businesses, are benefiting from a revolution in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a business owner, you will want to learn about this, because it could save you a lot of time and money on website development or web design costs.
Very briefly, this is what happened before a CMS tool like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your requirements with a website developer or website designer. Then, the actual “web design” itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This meant time and money being spent with a professional web designer going over design elements of your web site such as the, colours, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be hand-coded with all the design elements and codes written into your page content. All pages were then assembled together into a web site using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files required to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and performed the way it was supposed to (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the site deemed as being completed and ready to go live.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. Web templates allow presentation elements of the website to be worked on separately from content on the page. The introduction of template elements helped to speed up the website creation process and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also enabled web development companies to service business clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses began adopting “template-based” web design services, templates started being created that could offer various custom settings, such as colour palettes, the ability to select different content styles, formats, elements, page layouts, and so on.
As web sites and web editing software developed, website templates also started transforming into web templating ”systems”, letting users manage the design elements of their web site.
And then, WordPress was developed and helped to start a new content management 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 take web template systems even further.
The WordPress theme system controls every aspect of your site’s design. It lets you add a “skin” to your entire site much like a website template system does but it gives you more control over the management, presentation and customization aspects of all template options.
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, one of the unique features of a WP theme is that how your web site displays to site visitors on the outside in no way affects the way your content is managed.
In plain English terms, what this means is that themes let you modify the design of your website as often as you like without modifying your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if WordPress site has been set up for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this important?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any WP theme you like, and completely change the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in seconds, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WP site with no website coding knowledge required. Simply pick a theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your web design and modify elements like headers, layout, typography and more in less than a few minutes …
As WordPress is made available as open source software, professional web design companies can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that loads of great WordPress themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are generally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of great WP themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider range of applications.
Themes vary from corporate-looking, to stylish designs that are visually beautiful and would easily cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, themes can be purchased quite cheaply, especially when compared to what it would have cost you if a website designer had to create it from scratch.
You can view a number of theme galleries containing many examples of great premium themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Using WP Themes
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using traditional web design:
Ready To Start Using In No Time
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving community of commercial web designers and design companies who make thousands of quality WP Themes available to users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This means you can swap the “look and feel” of your site as often as you want without modifying the settings.
- Many themes come with additional built-in features and options that enable you to customize your site’s style, 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. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically inside your admin panel.
- WordPress themes helps you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally quite inexpensive.
About Responsive WP Themes
Many WP theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically resize to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. PCs, iPads, smart phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and load the site on most device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to install additional display elements.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your web site will display correctly on 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 web design and web coding.
I hope this article has provided you with a clearer overview of themes, what themes are, how themes help your business save money on web development costs, and how themes make it easy to customize a WP site.
In our next article in the article series for new WP users on understanding basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to find great themes for your blog.
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