Flexible content management tools like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have effectively improved web design and web development for business users.
This is a great thing for entrepreneurial-minded people planning to start a website that they can manage by themselves.
Prior to blogging and the development of powerful CMS tools, if you wanted to build a professional site built for your business, you typically would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This process could mean weeks, even many months of waiting for the work to be done!
The introduction of WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, you will learn what themes are, how WP themes help you save money, and how WP themes make it easy to customize your WP site.
Web Design Revolution
Website owners will benefit from a revolutionary change in website design that has been going for a number of years now. If you own a business, you may want to learn more about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on website development or web design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s how things used to work in “traditional” web development before WordPress came along:
First, you would discuss your requirements with a web developer or designer. After this, the actual “web design” itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This required time and money being spent with someone with web site design skills discussing elements of the web site like the layout, colours, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be individually created with all the design elements and scripts coded around your page content. All pages were then assembled into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and was performing how it was supposed to (and looking the way a client had imagined it to look), was the website deemed to have been completed and ready to go live.
Then, website “templates” came along”. A web site template allows the presentation of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. The development of ready-made templates helped to make the process of site development faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also allowed web development agencies to work with small businesses and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of web site development companies adopting “template-based” websites increased, templates started being designed to offer clients with expanding customization features and options, such as the ability to switch colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and website editor software developed, web templates also started transforming into website template “systems” that let users and website developers manage their website’s design elements.
Then, a “blogging” software called WordPress was developed and helped to kick off 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
WordPress themes drive web templating systems one step 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 also also gives you complete control over the management and ability to customize all template options.
As WordPress states in its website …
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, a unique and revolutionary feature of WordPress is that the way your website appears to visitors externally is managed separately from the management of your content.
Basically, what this means is that you can change the design of your website as often as you like without touching 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 web site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your site’s web design is done. You can get your business website built simply and get started with any theme you want, and edit the entire look, feel and design of your site in a few minutes, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site with no website code editing skills necessary. Simply pick a WordPress theme you want, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like header images, page layout, style settings and more with just a couple of mouse clicks …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, commercial web design companies can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes are made available to WP users. Themes are normally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE directory of WordPress themes which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of great WP themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider range of uses.
WordPress themes vary from functional-looking, to clever designs that are visually stunning and could easily cost thousands of dollars to design. Surprisingly, themes are really inexpensive.
You can see several theme galleries that include stunning examples of great premium WordPress themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over using traditional web template design:
Be Up And Running In Very Little Time
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free WP theme directory at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving online community of professional web developers and development companies who, collectively, make thousands of professional WordPress Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent design across all of your site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This allows you swap WordPress themes as often as you like without affecting your underlying content of your web site.
- Many themes provide built-in features and options that enable you to easily customize the theme’s layout, style and design properties to create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets you update themes to newer theme versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically inside the site’s administration interface.
- Themes helps you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are typically quite inexpensive.
Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many WP theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes for the WP CMS platform.
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 navigate, read and display a site on most device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional display elements.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site works on your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards, practices and techniques of website design.
Hopefully, the above article has given you a better understanding of themes, what themes are, how WP themes help you and your business save money on web design costs, and how themes make customizing your web design easy.
In the next blog post on helping you understand WordPress features, we show you where to find the best WordPress themes for your blog.
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