Powerful website management applications like the WordPress CMS platform have truly simplified web design and web development for non-technical business users.
This is a great thing for non-technical users wanting an online business presence that they can easily manage themselves.
Before “blogging” and the introduction of advanced content management systems, if you needed a business site, you typically would have to wait until both the website development and website design processes were completely done. This could mean waiting for many weeks, sometimes even many months!
The introduction of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this blog post, you will learn what themes are, how they save you money on web development costs, and how themes allow you to easily customize your website.
Website Design Evolution
More website owners today will benefit from a tremendous change in web design that has been going for a number of years now. If you are a business owner, you will want to learn about this, because it can save your business thousands of dollars on web development or website design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s how things used to work in “traditional” web development before CMS solutions like WordPress were introduced:
First, you would meet with a website development firm or designer for a brief. Then, the “web design” itself would be decided upon. This meant spending time with someone with web design skills discussing areas of the website like the, colours, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be individually created with all your design elements and codes scripted into the 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 site work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and functioned how it should (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the web site deemed to have been completed and ready to go live.
Then, website “templates” were developed”. A website template allows design elements of the website to be worked on separately from the page content. Having template elements helped make the process of website creation faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also enabled web development firms to service businesses and clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses using “template-based” websites increased, web templates were introduced that offered a range of custom options, such as colour palettes, the ability to select different formats or header, footer and navigation elements, and so on.
As websites and website editing applications developed, website templates also started transforming into web template “systems” that let users and website developers customize their web site’s design elements.
Then, WordPress was introduced and helped to kick off a new business 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
WordPress themes drive website template systems much further.
The WordPress theme system controls all of the design elements of a website. It allows you to add a “skin” over your entire site in a similar way that a website template system does but also gives you more control over the management, presentation and customization aspects of all template settings.
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 in the quote above, one of the unique features of the WP theme is that the way your web site looks to site visitors on the outside in no way affects your site’s functional aspects (e.g. content management and functionality).
In plain English terms, what this means is that a WordPress theme lets you change the look and feel of your website as often as you like without touching your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if your 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 website. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this important?
Because with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your website’s design is done. You can get your website built simply and get started with any WordPress theme you like, and then completely modify the look, feel and design of your site in minutes, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site without needing any web design skills. Just pick a theme you want, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and modify elements like headers, page layout, typography and more in a few seconds …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, web designers can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of great WP themes are made available to WP users. WordPress are usually distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great website templates for free …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their content online, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider range of applications.
WP themes vary from functional-looking, to dynamic designs that are quite spectacular and would easily cost thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most premium WP themes can be bought very cheaply, especially when you compare the price to what you would have been charged if a website designer had to create it from scratch.
You can see a number of theme galleries that include stunning examples of great themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Using Themes
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over using traditional web design:
Ready To Go To Work In Minutes
WP themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your admin user login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large online community of commercial website developers and development companies who make thousands of fantastic WordPress Themes available to WordPress users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all of your blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This means you can change the “look and feel” of your web site as often as you like without deleting your blog data.
- Many themes provide additional functionality and options that enable you to customize your theme’s layout, style and design properties and create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables you to upgrade the theme to a newer theme version without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically inside the admin panel.
- WordPress themes helps you save thousands of dollars on website development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically very inexpensive.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many theme developers are now developing themes that incorporate “responsive” design standards.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically resize to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. computers, iPads, cell phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and display a site on most devices without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to install additional display elements.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your web site will display correctly across your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards, practices and techniques of web design and coding.
Hopefully, this basic overview has helped you gain a better understanding about themes, what WordPress themes are, how they can help you and your business save money on web development costs, and how themes allow you to easily customize your site.
In our next blog post on understanding basic WordPress features, we show you where to search for the best WordPress themes for your website or blog.
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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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