Advanced content management applications like the WordPress CMS platform have effectively simplified web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This greatly benefits entrepreneurial-minded people planning on getting a web presence that they can manage by themselves.
Before blogging and the development of easy-to-use CMS software, if you wanted to get a website built for your business, you would have to wait until both the website development and web design processes were fully completed. This process could mean weeks, even months of waiting around!
The introduction of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this blog post, we look at what WordPress themes are, how WordPress themes save you money on web design costs, and how themes let you easily customize your site.
The Evolution Of Web Design
Businesses will benefit from a revolutionary change in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a business owner, you will want to learn about this, because it can save you a lot of time and money on web development and web design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s how things typically worked in “traditional” website development before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a web developer or website designer for a brief. Next, the design of your web site had to be discussed and agreed upon. This required spending time and money with a professional web site designer discussing elements of your website such as the layout, colors, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be hand-coded with all of the design elements and scripts coded into the page content. All the pages were then assembled together into a website using links 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 elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and was functioning the way it was supposed to (and looking the way the client had wanted it to look), was the site considered to have been finished and ready to go live.
The next step in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. A website template allows the design of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. The introduction of ready-made templates helped make site creation faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also allowed website developers to service small businesses with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses started adopting “template-based” websites, templates started being introduced to provide clients with various customization features and options, like the option to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and web building tools developed, web templates also started evolving into web templating ”systems”, allowing users to customize the visual elements of their site.
And then, a “blogging” tool called WordPress came along and helped to start 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:
WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme expands the concept of a website template system further.
A WordPress theme controls and unifies every aspect of your site’s design. It allows you to add a “skin” to your site much like a web template system does but it also also provides you with more control over the management, appearance and customization aspects of all template options.
As WordPress puts it …
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 quote states, a unique and revolutionary feature of a WordPress theme is that the way your site looks to visitors externally is kept independent of the management of your content.
In plain English terms, what this means is that you can change the design of your website as much and as often as you like without affecting your site’s content and all the work you’ve put 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, site and plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be completed. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any WordPress theme you like, and then modify the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in a few seconds, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site with no website code editing knowledge required. Simply pick a WordPress theme you want, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and modify elements like header images, page layout, typography and more with just a few mouse clicks …
As WordPress is open source software, website designers all around the world can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that thousands of great WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are generally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE directory of WP themes which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of excellent themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – Free WP Theme Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider audience of WordPress site owners.
WordPress themes vary from bare-looking, to jaw-dropping designs that are simply spectacular and would typically cost many hundreds of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most premium WP themes are fairly inexpensive to buy.
You can see a number of theme galleries containing many examples of great themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits & Advantages
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over using traditional web template design:
Easy & Fast To Install
Themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large community of commercial theme developers and development companies who, collectively, make thousands of quality WordPress Themes available to users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all of your site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This allows you replace WP themes as often as you like without modifying the underlying content of your blog.
- Many themes come with additional built-in features and settings that allow you to easily customize your site’s style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that allows users to upgrade the theme to a newer theme version without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically inside the dashboard.
- WP themes allow users to save hundreds of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally quite inexpensive.
Responsive Theme Design
Many theme developers are now creating “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. computers, tablets, cell phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and load a site on various devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional themes.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your web site will work correctly on all of your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards and practices of web design and coding.
Hopefully, this overview has given you a clearer understanding of WordPress themes, what WordPress themes are, how themes can help your business save money on website design costs, and how WordPress themes make customizing your web design easy.
To learn where to find great WP themes for your website or blog, see this post: How To Find The Best Premium And Free Responsive WordPress Web Themes For Your WordPress Site 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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