Advanced website management platforms like the WordPress CMS platform have truly simplified web design and web development for business users.
This is a great thing for non-technical users planning to start an online business presence that is easy to manage.
Prior to blogging and the development of advanced CMS solutions, if you needed to get a web site built for your business, you had to wait until both the website development and web design processes were fully completed. This process could mean waiting for many weeks, even months!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, we will explore what WP themes are, how WordPress themes help you save money, and how themes allow you to easily customize your website.
The Evolution Of Web Site Design
More website owners will benefit from a great change in web design that has been going for a number of years now. If you are a small business owner, you may want to learn about this, because it can save you thousands of dollars on website development or web design costs.
Let’s review what typically took place before application like WordPress was introduced:
The first step would be to meet with a web development agency or designer for a brief. After this, the actual design itself would be decided upon. This meant spending time with someone with web design skills discussing design elements of the website like the layout, colours, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be individually created with all the elements and scripts coded into the page content. The pages were then assembled together into a web site using links and 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 once everything had been tested and was performing the way it should (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the website deemed as being finished and ready to go live.
Then, website “templates” were introduced”. Website templates allow ”look and feel” elements of the web site to be created separately from content on the page. Having templates helped speed up the web site creation process and resulted in lowered production costs. This also enabled website development agencies to service smaller businesses and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more website development companies started choosing “template-based” websites, web templates were developed that provided clients with various customization settings, such as the option to switch colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and web building tools evolved, website templates also began evolving into web templating “systems” that allow website owners to manage the visual components of their web site.
Then, WordPress was introduced and helped to start 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
A WordPress theme expands web templating systems further.
A WP theme controls and integrates every aspect of your site’s design. It lets you add a “skin” to your site similarly to what a template system does but it also also provides you with more control over the management and customization aspects 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, one of the unique features of the WP theme is that the way your website looks to site visitors is kept independent of the way your content is managed.
Basically, what this means is that WP themes let you change the design of your website as much and as often as you like without affecting 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 your site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain intact, 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 completed. You can get your business website built simply and start with any WordPress theme you like, and change the entire look, feel and design of your site in mere seconds, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site without requiring any website design skills. Just pick any theme you want, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your site’s design and customize elements like headers, layout, style settings and more with just a few mouse clicks …
Since WordPress is made available as open source software, website design companies all around the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP template system.
This means that loads of high quality WP themes are made available to WordPress users. WP are normally distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent website templates at no cost …
(WordPress.org – WP Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now focused on developing themes for a wider range of applications.
Themes range from minimal-looking, to designs that are simply stunning and would easily cost many hundreds of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most themes are really inexpensive to purchase.
You can view a number of WP theme galleries containing various examples of great WordPress themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of choosing WordPress themes over using traditional web design:
Easy And Quick To Install
WP themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress administrator section and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing online community of professional web designers and design companies who, collectively, make thousands of great-looking, high quality WP Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent look across all of the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This means you can swap themes as often as you like without modifying the content.
- Many WordPress themes come with built-in features and options that enable you to easily customize your theme’s layout, style and design properties and create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that allows users to update 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 directly from the dashboard.
- Themes lets you save thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are typically very inexpensive.
Responsive WP Theme Design
Many WordPress theme developers are now creating WP themes that incorporate “responsive” functionality.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and display your site on different device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser elements.
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 displays well across all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards and practices of web design and coding.
We hope the above article has helped you gain a better understanding of themes, what themes are, how WordPress themes help your business save money on web design costs, and how WordPress themes make customizing your web design easy.
To learn where to find the best WP themes for your website, go here:
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