The development of powerful web publishing tools like the WordPress CMS platform has effectively improved web design and web development for web users.
This is terrific news for individuals or businesses that want a web presence that is simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Prior to blogging and the development of advanced content management systems, if you needed a professional website, you had to wait until both the website development and web design processes were fully completed. This could take many weeks, sometimes even many months!
WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, you will learn what themes are, how WP themes can help you save money on web development costs, and how WordPress themes allow you to easily customize your WordPress site.
The Evolution Of Web Design
More website owners today will benefit from a tremendous revolution in website design that has been going for a number of years now. If you are a small business owner, you may want to learn more about this, because it can save your business thousands of dollars on web development or web design costs.
In a nutshell, this is what happened before tool like WordPress was introduced:
First, you would meet with a website developer or designer for a brief. After this, the actual design of your website itself would be decided upon. This required time being spent with someone with web site design skills discussing design elements of your site such as the layout, colours, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your site then had to be individually created with the design elements and codes written into your content. All pages were then assembled together into a website using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files required to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and worked the way it should (and looking the way the client had wanted it to look), was the site considered to have been finished and ready for delivery.
The next step in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “web templating elements”. A website template allows the presentation of the website to be worked on separately from the page content. The introduction of ready-made templates helped make building websites faster and resulted in lowered production costs. This also enabled web site designers to service business clients and clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses began choosing “template-based” websites, templates started being designed that provided clients with a number of customizable features, like colour palettes, the ability to select different formats and page layouts, etc …
As websites and web building tools evolved, website templates also started evolving into web templating “systems” that let website owners customize the visual components of a site.
Then, WordPress was developed 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
WordPress themes drive web template systems even further.
A WordPress theme controls the design areas of the website. It allows you to add a “skin” over your entire site in a similar way that a template system does but it also also gives you complete control over the management, appearance and ability to customize template features.
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 stated in the quote above, a unique and revolutionary feature of the WordPress theme is that how your website displays to visitors is managed separately from the way your content is managed.
Basically, what this means is that a theme lets you change the appearance of your website as much and as often as you like without touching your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if WordPress site has been configured for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this important?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your website built quickly and start with any theme you want, and then customize the entire look, feel and design of your site in minutes, whenever you choose … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without needing web coding skills. Simply pick any theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your web design and modify elements like headers, page layout, style settings and more in a few seconds …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, web design companies from all over the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WP users. Themes are generally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE directory of WordPress themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent web templates at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Free WordPress Theme Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider range of uses.
WP themes vary from simple-looking, to dynamic designs that are beautiful and could normally cost many hundreds of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most premium WP themes are really inexpensive to purchase.
You can see a number of theme galleries containing stunning examples of great premium themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits & Advantages
Here are just some of the benefits of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional web template design:
WordPress Theme Installation Is Easy, Simple & Fast
WordPress themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your admin user area and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing online community of commercial theme designers who make thousands of fantastic WP Themes available to WP users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent look across all of the site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This allows you swap WordPress themes as often as you need without affecting your website’s underlying information.
- Many WordPress themes come with built-in features and settings that allow you to easily customize the site’s style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that enables you to upgrade themes to a newer theme version without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically right inside your dashboard.
- Themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on website development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically very inexpensive.
About Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many WordPress theme designers are now creating themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can scroll, read and display the site on most if not all device platforms without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser elements.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website will display correctly on your visitors’ devices, but 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.
I hope that this basic overview has helped you gain a better understanding about themes, what WordPress themes are, how themes help you save money on web development costs, and how WP themes allow you to easily customize a web site.
In the next blog post in our article WP beginners on helping you understand WordPress features, we show you where to search for the best themes for your blog.
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