The introduction of content publishing applications like the WordPress CMS platform has effectively simplified web design and web development for anyone wanting a website.
This greatly benefits businesses planning to run a website that is relatively easy to manage.
Before “blogging” and the introduction of user-friendly content management systems, if you wanted to get a site built for your business, you had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were fully completed. This process could take many weeks, sometimes even many months!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, you will learn what WP themes are, how WordPress themes can help you and your business save money, and how themes make it easy to customize your website.
Evolution In Web Design
More website owners today will benefit from a revolutionary change in web design that has been going for several 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 web development or website design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s what typically happened before a CMS tool like WordPress was developed:
The first step would be to discuss your project with a web developer or web site designer. After that, the actual “web design” itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This required spending time and money with someone with website design skills discussing design elements of your site like the, colours, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be individually created with the design elements and codes inserted into the page content. The pages were then assembled together into a web site using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files required to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and worked the way it was supposed to (and looking the way a client had wanted it to look), was the site considered as being finished and ready for sign off.
Then, web design “templates” were introduced”. A web template allows design elements of the website to be worked on separately from content on the page. The development of ready-made templates helped to speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in reduced production costs. This also enabled website designers to work with smaller businesses and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web site development agencies began using “template-based” web design services, web templates started being introduced that provided clients with expanding customization options, like color palettes, the ability to specify different menu styles or styles, and so on.
As web sites and web building applications developed, web templates also began transforming into web templating “systems” that allow users to control the design aspects of a site.
And then, WordPress was developed and helped to kick off a new content management 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 templating systems even further.
The WP theme system controls and unifies every aspect of your web design. It allows you to add a “skin” to your entire site similarly to what a template system does but it provides you with complete control over the management and ability to customize template settings.
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, one of the unique and revolutionary features of a WP theme is that how your website appears to site visitors does not affect the management of your content.
In simple terms, what this means is that themes let you modify the design of your website as much and as often as you like without modifying your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if WordPress website has been configured for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your website. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be done. You can get your website built quickly and start with any theme you like, and edit the entire look, feel and design of your website in seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site with no website code programming knowledge required. Just choose any theme you want, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your web design and modify elements like header images, page layout, style settings and more in minutes …
As WordPress is open source software, website design companies can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WordPress themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are generally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent WP themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – WP Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider range of users.
WP themes vary from corporate-looking, to elegant designs that are spectacular and could typically cost many hundreds of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most themes can be bought fairly inexpensively, especially when compared to what you would have been charged if a web designer had to create it from scratch.
You can see a number of WordPress theme galleries containing stunning examples of WP themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits & Advantages Of Themes
Here are just some of the many benefits of choosing WordPress themes over choosing traditional website design:
Ready To Use In Minutes
WP themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply 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 WordPress themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large community of professional web designers who contribute thousands of professional WordPress 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 blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This means you can change WordPress themes as often as you want without affecting the content.
- Many WordPress themes come with additional features and settings that enable you to customize the theme’s style, layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that allows you to upgrade the theme to newer theme versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically right inside the site’s administration interface.
- Themes allow users to save thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally very inexpensive.
About Responsive Themes
Many theme designers are now developing “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically resize to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and display your site on various device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to install additional browser elements.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website displays well on all of your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards, practices and techniques of website design.
We hope that this article has helped you gain a clearer understanding of WP themes, what themes are, how themes can help you and your business save money on website development costs, and how WordPress themes make customizing web sites easy.
To learn where to find great themes for your website or blog, click here:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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