Flexible website publishing technologies like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have truly improved web design and web development for anyone wanting a website.
This is a great thing for individuals or businesses that want a web presence that is relatively simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Before blogging and the introduction of sophisticated content management systems, if you needed a professional business web site, you had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were completely done. This process could take weeks, sometimes even many months!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, you will learn what WP themes are, how themes save you money on web design costs, and how themes make it easy to customize your site.
Revolutionary Web Design
More website owners are benefiting from a tremendous change in web design that started many years ago. If you own a business, you may want to know about this, because it could save you a lot of time and money on web development or web design costs.
Let’s briefly review what used to happen before WordPress was introduced:
The first step would be to meet with a website developer or web designer for a brief. After this, the actual “web design” itself had to be decided upon. This required spending time and money with a professional website designer discussing things of the site such as the, colours, formats, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be hand-coded with all of the design elements and scripts coded around your page content. All of the pages were then assembled together into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and was working how it should (and looking how the client had wanted it to look), was the site considered as being finished and ready to go live.
The next step in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “web templating elements”. Web site templates allow the presentation of the website to be worked on separately from content on the page. Having template elements helped to speed up the web creation process and resulted in reduced production costs. This also enabled web development companies to service smaller businesses and clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web site development firms began using “template-based” websites, templates started being designed to offer different customizable options, like the option to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As websites and web editing applications developed, website templates also started to evolve into website template ”systems”, which enabled website owners to manage their web site’s visual components.
And then, WordPress was developed 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:
The WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme drives the concept of a website template system much further.
The WordPress theme system controls all of the design elements of a web site. It allows you to add a “skin” to your site similarly to what a web template system does but also gives you complete control over the management and ability to customize your template features.
As stated 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 the above states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of the WP theme is that the way your site appears to site visitors on the outside does not affect how your content is managed.
Basically, what this means is that WP themes let you change the appearance of your site as much and as often as you like without modifying your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if your site 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 your web site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when your site is powered with WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your site to be completed. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any theme you like, and then completely customize the look, feel and design of your website in minutes, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site without requiring web design skills. Just choose any WordPress theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like header images, page layout, style settings and more in a few seconds …
Since WordPress is open source software, professional website design companies anywhere in the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes are made available to WP users. Themes are usually distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE directory of WordPress themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent WP themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – WP Themes Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their digital presence, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider range of applications.
WP themes range from corporate-looking, to designs that are visually impressive and would normally cost many hundreds of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most premium WP themes can be bought quite inexpensively, especially when compared to what it would have cost you if a web designer had to develop it from scratch.
You can see several WordPress theme galleries containing many examples of great themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Using WP Themes
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over using website development tools that require traditional website design:
Ready To Go To Work In No Time
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your administrator area and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving online community of professional web developers who contribute thousands of fantastic WordPress Themes available to users. Many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent look across all your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This makes it possible to change the “look and feel” of your site as often as you need without changing your blog settings.
- Many WordPress themes provide built-in functionality and options that enable you to customize the site’s layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows users to upgrade themes to newer versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically inside your admin panel.
- WP themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on website development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically quite inexpensive.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many WordPress theme designers are now developing themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. PCs, iPads, mobile phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and display the site on most if not all device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser elements.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will work correctly on all of your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards of web design and coding.
I hope that this basic overview has helped you gain a better understanding of themes, what WordPress themes are, how themes help you save money on website development costs, and how WordPress themes allow you to easily customize a WP site.
To learn where to find the best WordPress themes for your website, see this post: Finding Great Free And Paid WordPress Web Templates Online.
***
"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
***