Flexible content management technologies like WordPress have truly improved web design and web development for non-technical web users.
This greatly benefits business owners planning to build a website that they can fully manage themselves.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of powerful and simple CMS tools, if you needed to get a professional web site for your business, you typically had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were completely done. This could mean weeks, sometimes even many months of waiting around!
The development of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this blog post, you will learn what WP themes are, how WordPress themes save your business money on web design costs, and how themes make it easy to customize your WordPress site.
A Revolution In Website Design
More businesses today have been benefiting from a revolution in website design that started several years ago. If you are a small business owner, you may want to learn about this, because it can save your business a lot of time and money on website development or web design costs.
Very briefly, here’s how things used to work in “traditional” web design before software like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your requirements with a web site developer or designer. Then, the “web design” itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This required spending time with a professional website designer discussing areas of the site such as the layout, colors, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be individually created with all of your elements and codes written into your content. The pages were then assembled into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and performed how it should (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the website deemed as being finished and ready for delivery.
Then, website “templates” were developed”. Web site templates allow the ”look and feel” of the website to be worked on separately from the page content. The introduction of templates helped make web site development faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also allowed web developers to work with small businesses with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses started adopting “template-based” websites, templates were designed to provide a number of customizable options, like the option to switch colors, styles, layouts
As websites and website building tools developed, web templates also started to transform into website template ”systems”, letting website owners and website designers manage their website’s design aspects.
And then, a “blogging” application called WordPress was developed 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:
About WordPress Themes
WordPress themes take website template systems one step further.
The WP theme system controls the design elements of your web site. It allows you to add a “skin” over your entire site much like a template system does but it also also provides users with complete control over the management, presentation and ability to customize all 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 the above quote states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of the WordPress theme is that the way your website appears to site visitors externally is controlled separately from the way your site works internally to handle areas like content management and functionality.
In plain English terms, what this means is that a theme lets you change the look and feel of your site as much and as often as you want without touching your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if your site has been configured for e-commerce, replacing the 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.
Why is this great for small businesses?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your site’s web design is done. You can get your business website built simply and start with any WordPress theme you like, and then customize the entire look, feel and design of your site in mere minutes, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site without having website code editing skills. Just choose any theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your website design and modify elements like headers, layout, style settings and more with just a couple of mouse clicks …
Because WordPress is distributed as open source software, website design companies from all over the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WordPress themes are made available to WordPress users. WP are normally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of excellent website templates for free …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider audience of web users.
WordPress themes range from simple-looking, to designs that are breathtaking and would easily cost thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, WordPress themes can be bought very inexpensively, especially when compared to what it would have cost you if a web designer had to code it from scratch.
You can view a number of theme galleries that include many examples of great WordPress themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WP Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over choosing traditional web design:
Easy, Quick And Simple To Install
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP themes repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing community of professional theme developers and development companies who, collectively, contribute thousands of high quality WordPress Themes available to WP users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all the site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This allows you replace the “look and feel” of your website as often as you like without changing the blog content.
- Many themes come with additional built-in functionality and settings that enable you to easily customize your site’s style, layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that enables users to update themes to a newer theme version without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically right within your site’s administration interface.
- WP themes helps you save thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally quite inexpensive.
About Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many theme developers are now creating “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different types of devices. Users can scroll, read and display a site on most device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional display elements.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website will work correctly across your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards, practices and techniques of website design.
Hopefully, this post has provided you with a good overview of WordPress themes, what WP themes are, how themes can help your business save money on web design costs, and how WP themes make customizing your web design easy.
In our next article in our article WordPress beginners on understanding basic WordPress features, we show you where to search for the best WordPress themes for your blog.
***
"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
***