The introduction of powerful web site publishing systems like the WordPress CMS has effectively improved web design and web development for anyone wanting a website.
This is a great thing for entrepreneurial-minded people planning to build a website that they can manage themselves.
Prior to blogging and the development of powerful content management systems, if you wanted to get a website built for your business, you had to wait until both the website development and web design processes were completely done. This process could mean waiting around for many weeks, even many months!
The introduction of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this blog post, we will explore what themes are, how WordPress themes save you and your business money on web development costs, and how WP themes allow you to easily customize your WP site.
A Revolution In Web Site Design
More website owners have benefited from an evolution in website design that started many years ago. If you are a small business owner, you may want to learn more about this, because it could save your business thousands of dollars on web development or website design costs.
Let’s go over what happened before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your project with a web site development company or designer. Next, the ”look and feel” of your website had to be decided upon. This meant spending time with someone with website design skills discussing design elements of your website like the, colours, styles, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be hand-coded with all the design elements and scripts coded around your page content. All the pages were then assembled together into a web site using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file required to make your website work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and was functioning how it should (and looking the way the client had wanted it to look), was the website considered to be finished and ready to go live.
Then, website “templates” were developed”. Web templates allow ”look and feel” elements of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. Having ready-made templates helped to speed up the web site creation process and resulted in lowered production costs. This also enabled website development agencies to expand their services to include businesses and clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses choosing “template-based” web design services increased, web templates were developed that provided clients with expanding customization options, such as color palettes, the ability to pick different page layouts or styles, etc …
As web sites and web editor tools developed, website templates also started transforming into web template “systems” that let users customize the design elements of a site.
And then, a “blogging” tool called WordPress was developed and helped to kick off a new web 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 push web template systems further.
The WordPress theme system controls every aspect of your web site design. It allows you to add a “skin” over your entire site in a similar way that a web template system does but it also also gives you complete control over the management and customization of all template features.
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 feature of the WP theme is that how your web site looks to site visitors on the outside is managed separately from the way your website works in the backend to handle areas like content management and functionality.
Basically, what this means is that you can modify the design of your site as often as you like without modifying your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if your website has been configured for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the site. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when your site is built with WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be done. You can get your website built simply and start with any theme you want, and then change the entire look, feel and design of your website in a few seconds, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WordPress site with no web code programming skills required. Simply pick any theme you want, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your web design and customize elements like header images, layout, styling options and more in a few seconds …
Since WordPress is distributed as open source software, hundreds of web designers can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that thousands of great WordPress themes are made available to WP users. WP are usually distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of great website templates for free …
(WordPress.org – Free WP Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now focused on developing themes for a wider audience of web users.
WP themes range from simple-looking, to designs that are simply breathtaking and could typically cost thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most premium WordPress themes can be purchased very cheaply, especially when you compare the cost to what you would have had to pay if a website designer had to build it from scratch.
You can see several theme galleries that include various examples of great premium WordPress themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just some of the many benefits of choosing WordPress themes over choosing applications that require traditional web design:
Installation Is Easy
WP themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing community of professional web developers who, collectively, make thousands of high quality WP Themes available to WordPress users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent look across all the site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This means you can replace the “look and feel” of your web site or blog as often as you like without changing the blog data.
- Many themes come with additional features and options that let you customize the site’s layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that allows you to update the theme to a newer theme version without losing its unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically inside the dashboard.
- WordPress themes allow users to save thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically quite inexpensive.
Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many theme designers are now developing WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and display a site on most devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to install additional themes.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site works across your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards, practices and techniques of web design and coding.
I hope that this basic overview has given you a clearer understanding about WordPress themes, what WordPress themes are, how WordPress themes can help you and your business save money on web development costs, and how themes make customizing websites easy.
In the next blog post on basic WordPress features, we show you where to find the best WordPress themes for your website.
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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