Powerful website management tools like the WordPress CMS platform have truly improved web design and web development for web users.
This greatly benefits non-technical users planning to start or build a website that is simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Before blogging and the introduction of advanced CMS technologies, if you wanted to build a site for your business, you had to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This process could take many weeks, sometimes even many months!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this blog post, you will learn what WP themes are, how themes save you and your business money on web development costs, and how themes help you easily customize your website.
Website Design Evolution
More website owners have benefited from a revolution in web design that started a number of years ago. If you own a small business, you may want to know more about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on website development or web design costs.
Let’s review what used to happen before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your project with a website developer or designer. After that, the actual design itself had to be discussed and agreed upon. This required spending time with a professional web designer discussing things of the web site such as the layout, colors, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your site then had to be individually created with all your elements and scripts coded into your page content. The pages were then assembled into a website using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and worked how it should (and looking how the client had wanted it to look), was the web site deemed as being finished and ready for delivery.
The next stage in the evolution of business website design was the introduction of “web templates”. A web site template allows ”look and feel” elements of the web site to be worked on separately from content on the page. The introduction of ready-made templates helped make the process of developing websites faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also allowed web development companies to work with small business clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses choosing “template-based” websites increased, web templates were developed that could offer different customization features, such as the option to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and web editor applications developed, website templates also started to transform into website template “systems” that let users manage their site’s design components.
And then, WordPress was introduced and helped to start a new 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
A WordPress theme pushes the concept of a website template system even further.
A WordPress theme controls all of the design elements of a web site. It allows you to add a “skin” over your site similarly to what a template system does but it gives you complete control over the management, presentation and ability to customize the site’s template features.
As described in the official WordPress site …
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, one of the unique features of WordPress is that the way your website appears to site visitors is kept independent of your site’s content management settings.
Basically, what this means is that a WP theme lets you modify the look and feel of your site as much and 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 set up WordPress website for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when your website is built using WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be completed. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any theme you want, and edit the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in seconds, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WP site without having website code programming knowledge. Simply choose any theme you like, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and customize elements like headers, page layout, styling options and more with just a few mouse clicks …
Because WordPress is made available as open source software, hundreds of website design companies can create themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP template system.
This means that thousands of great WordPress themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. WP are generally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great WP themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Free WordPress Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now focused on developing themes for a wider range of applications.
Themes range from bare-looking, to designs that are visually breathtaking and would typically cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most WordPress themes are fairly inexpensive.
You can view several theme galleries containing various examples of great premium WP themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Using WP Themes
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over using tools that require traditional web design:
Ready To Use In No Time
Themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large online community of commercial web designers who make thousands of excellent WordPress Themes available to WordPress users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all of the blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This means you can swap WP themes as often as you need without changing the site information.
- Many WP themes provide additional functionality and options that let you easily customize your site’s style, layout and design properties and create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables users to upgrade the theme to a newer theme version without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically inside the site’s administration interface.
- Themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on website development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally very inexpensive.
Responsive WP Themes
Many WP theme designers are now creating “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can scroll, read and display your site on most if not all device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional display elements.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website works on your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards and practices of web design.
Hopefully, this post has provided you with a clearer overview of themes, what WordPress themes are, how WP themes can help you and your business save money, and how WP themes make customizing web sites easy.
In the next article in our article series for new WP users on helping you understand WP features, we show you where to find great WordPress themes for your blog.
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