The development of flexible web site management applications like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) has truly improved web design and web development for anyone wanting a website.
This is fantastic news for business owners planning to start a website that they can fully manage by themselves.
Before “blogging” and the introduction of user-friendly CMS solutions, if you needed to get a site built for your business, you would have to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This could mean weeks, even months of waiting!
WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how themes save you and your business money on web development costs, and how themes help you easily customize your WP site.
A Revolution In Web Site Design
More businesses today have benefited from a change in website design that has been going for many years now. If you are a business owner, you will want to know about this, because it could save you a lot of time and money on web development and website design costs.
Let’s review how things worked in “traditional” web development before WordPress was introduced:
First, you would meet with a web developer or web designer for a brief. After that, the design of the website had to be discussed and agreed upon. This meant time and money being spent with someone with web design skills going over areas of the website such as the, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all of the elements and codes inserted into the page content. All pages were then assembled together into a web site using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file required to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and performed how it was intended to (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the web site considered to have been finished and ready for delivery.
Then, website “templates” came along”. Website templates allow presentation elements of the website to be worked on separately from content on the page. The development of template elements helped make creating web sites faster and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed web site developers to service businesses and clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses using “template-based” web design services increased, templates started being designed to offer a number of customization options, such as colour palettes, the ability to pick different formats or header, footer and navigation elements, etc …
As websites and web building tools evolved, web templates also began to evolve into website template “systems” that permitted website owners to manage their web site’s design components.
Then, WordPress was developed 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:
The WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme takes web template systems one step further.
A WordPress theme controls and unifies all of the design aspects of a web site. It allows you to add a “skin” over your site similarly to what a template system does but it provides users with complete control over the management, appearance and customization of template options.
According to 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 the above states, a unique and revolutionary feature of the WordPress theme is that how your web site displays to site visitors is controlled independently of the management of your content.
In simple terms, what this means is that WP themes let you modify the appearance of your site as often as you want without touching 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 the site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, site and plugin 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 website built simply and get started with any theme you want, and then modify the entire look, feel and design of your site in minutes, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WordPress site with no web code programming skills required. Just choose any theme you want, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and customize elements like headers, layout, style settings and more in less than a few minutes …
Because WordPress is made available as open source software, hundreds of website designers anywhere in the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that loads of high quality WP themes are made available to WP users. Themes are normally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to access thousands of great WordPress themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Free Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
WordPress themes vary from functional-looking, to designs that are spectacular and would typically cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, themes are very inexpensive.
You can view a number of theme galleries that include stunning examples of great premium WP themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Using WordPress Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over using traditional website design:
Easy To Install
WP themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin area and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving community of commercial web designers who, collectively, make thousands of excellent WP Themes available to WP users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent look across all of your site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This allows you replace themes as often as you need without changing the blog content.
- Many themes provide built-in features and settings that enable you to easily customize your site’s layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that enables you to upgrade the theme 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 allow users to save hundreds of dollars on web design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically very affordable.
Responsive WP Theme Design
Many WP theme designers are now developing “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically resize to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different platforms. Users can navigate, read and display a site on a range of devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional themes.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your web site will display correctly across your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of web design coding.
I hope that the above article has given you a clearer overview of WP themes, what themes are, how themes help you and your business save money on website development costs, and how themes make customizing your web design easy.
In our next article in our article series on basic WordPress features, we show you where to search for great themes for your website or blog.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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