Flexible content publishing technologies like the WordPress CMS have effectively improved web design and web development for users.
This greatly benefits non-technical users planning to build a website that is easy to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of easy-to-use CMS technologies, if you wanted to build a professional web site for your business, you normally would have to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This could take many weeks, sometimes even months!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this blog post, you will learn what themes are, how they save you and your business money on website development costs, and how themes allow you to easily customize your website.
Revolutionary Web Design
Businesses, especially small businesses, are benefiting from a change in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a small business owner, you will want to learn about this, because it can save your business a lot of time and money on web development and website design costs.
Let’s briefly review how things worked in “traditional” web design before WordPress were introduced:
The first step would be to meet with a web developer or web designer for a brief. After this, the actual “web design” had to be discussed and agreed upon. This required spending time and money with a professional web site designer going over design elements of the web site like the, colors, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be hand-coded with your elements and scripts coded into the page content. All the pages were then assembled together into a website using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files required to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and performed how it was supposed to (and looking the way a client had imagined it to look), was the website considered as being completed and ready for sign off.
The next step in the evolution of web design was the introduction of “website templates”. Web templates allow presentation elements of the web site to be created separately from the page content. The introduction of template elements helped speed up the web creation process and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed web developers to expand their services to include small business clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses choosing “template-based” web design services increased, web templates started being developed that provided clients with a number of customizable options, such as colour palettes, the ability to specify different styles, formats, header, footer and navigation elements, layouts, etc …
As websites and website building tools developed, web templates also began evolving into web template ”systems”, letting website owners manage the design aspects of a site.
And then, a “blogging” tool called WordPress came along and helped to start a new online 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:
WordPress Themes
WordPress themes take the idea of a website template system much further.
The WordPress theme system controls and unifies 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 provides you with complete control over the management and customization aspects of template features.
As the official WordPress site states …
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, one of the unique features of WordPress is that the way your website appears to site visitors externally in no way affects how your content is managed.
Basically, what this means is that a theme lets you modify the look and feel of your site as often as you like without affecting your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have configured your website for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your website built simply and start with any WordPress theme you want, and then completely change the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in minutes, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site without the need of website coding skills. Just pick any WordPress theme you like, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your entire site’s web design and customize elements like header images, layout, typography and more in less than a few minutes …
As WordPress is open source software, web designers anywhere in the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP template system.
This means that loads of great WordPress themes can be downloaded by WP users. WP are usually 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 keeps a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – Free Theme Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their content online, more designers are now focused on developing themes for a wider range of uses.
Themes vary from minimal-looking, to designs that are visually impressive and could easily cost thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, themes are really inexpensive.
You can view a number of theme galleries that include many examples of great WordPress themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WP Themes – Benefits & Advantages
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over using applications that require traditional web design:
Installation Is Easy
WP themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your WP administrator area and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing online community of commercial website designers and design companies who contribute thousands of professional WordPress Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all your site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This allows you change themes as often as you want without deleting your site’s information.
- Many WordPress themes provide built-in features and options that let you customize the theme’s style, layout and design properties and create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets you upgrade the theme to newer versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically right inside the admin panel.
- Themes helps you save hundreds of dollars on website development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally very affordable.
About Responsive WP Theme Design
Many WordPress theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically resize to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. laptops, tablets, cell phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different platforms. Users can navigate, read and load the site on all devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional themes.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your web site will display correctly on all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards and practices of website design coding.
I hope this basic overview has helped you gain a clearer understanding of themes, what themes are, how themes can help your business save money, and how WordPress themes make customizing your web design easy.
In the next article on understanding basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for the best themes for your website.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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