Powerful web management technologies like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have effectively simplified web design and web development for non-technical business owners.
This greatly benefits business owners that want a web presence that is relatively easy to manage.
Before blogging and the introduction of easy-to-use CMS technologies, if you wanted 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 could mean weeks, sometimes even months of waiting around!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, we explore what WP themes are, how they save your business money on website design costs, and how WP themes allow you to easily customize your website.
Website Design Revolution
More businesses will benefit from a revolutionary change in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a small business, you may want to learn more about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on website development and web design costs.
Very briefly, this is how things worked in “traditional” web development before WordPress were introduced:
First, you would meet with a web development company or web site designer for a brief. After that, the actual “web design” itself would be decided upon. This required spending time with someone with web design skills discussing elements of your website like the layout, colours, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be individually created with your elements and scripts coded around the page content. All of the pages were then assembled 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 site work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and performed how it was intended to (and looking the way a client had wanted it to look), was the web site considered as being completed and ready for delivery.
The next phase in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “web templates”. A website template allows the design of the web site to be created separately from the page content. Having templates helped to make the process of web site development faster and resulted in lowered production costs. This also enabled web site development agencies to expand their services to include businesses and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses began using “template-based” web design services, templates started being created to provide expanding custom features and options, such as the ability to switch colours, styles, layouts
As websites and web editor applications developed, web templates also started to transform into web templating “systems” that let website owners control the design aspects of their site.
And then, a “blogging” application called WordPress came along and helped to start a new 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 takes the idea of a website template system much further.
A WP theme controls and unifies the design areas of your web site. It allows you to add a “skin” to your entire site in a similar way that a template system does but it also also gives you complete control over the management, presentation and customization aspects of the template options.
As the official WordPress site describes 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 stated in the quote above, a unique and revolutionary feature of the WP theme is that the way your website appears to visitors externally does not affect your site’s functional aspects (e.g. content management and functionality).
In simple terms, what this means is that a WordPress theme lets you change the design of your website as often as you like without affecting your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if your website has been set up for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your website. 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 website is powered with WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your website’s design is done. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any theme you want, and edit the entire look, feel and design of your site in mere seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site without having web design skills. Simply choose any theme you want, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like headers, page layout, typography and more with just a couple of mouse clicks …
Because WordPress is made available as open source software, hundreds of website design companies can design themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are normally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of great themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their digital presence, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider audience of WordPress site owners.
Themes range from minimal-looking, to designs that are beautiful and could typically cost thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most premium themes can be purchased fairly cheaply, especially when you compare the price to what you would have been charged if a website designer had to build it from scratch.
You can view a number of theme galleries that include stunning examples of great premium WP themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing tools that require traditional website design:
Ready To Use In Minutes
WP themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing community of professional theme developers and development companies who make thousands of high quality WordPress Themes available to WordPress users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent design across all the site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This allows you replace WordPress themes as often as you need without affecting the blog’s underlying information.
- Many WP themes provide additional functionality and settings that allow you to easily customize your site’s layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets users update themes to a newer theme version without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically inside the dashboard.
- WordPress themes helps you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally very affordable.
Responsive Theme Design
Many WordPress theme developers are now developing WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and load a site on all device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser tools.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will display correctly on all devices, 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.
Hopefully, the above overview has helped you gain a clearer understanding about themes, what themes are, how themes can help your business save money on website design costs, and how themes make customizing web sites easy.
To learn where to find great WP themes for your website or blog, visit this post: Finding The Best Premium And Free WordPress Templates On The Net.
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