Powerful website publishing applications like WordPress have truly improved web design and web development for website owners.
This is a great thing for non-technical users thinking of starting a digital presence that is relatively easy to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of advanced CMS applications, if you wanted a business web site, you typically would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This could mean waiting for many weeks, even many months!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this blog post, we take a look at what themes are, how they can help your business save money on website design costs, and how themes let you easily customize your WordPress site.
Website Design Evolution
Businesses, especially small businesses, are benefiting from an evolution in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a business owner, you will want to learn about this, because it can save you a lot of time and money on web development or web design costs.
Let’s go over what used to happen before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your project with a website development firm or designer. Then, the actual “web design” itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This meant spending time and money with someone with web design skills discussing design elements of your site such as the layout, colors, formats, graphic elements, content, etc.
Every page of your site then had to be hand-coded with all of the design elements and codes inserted into your content. All the pages were then assembled together into a website using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and performed how it was intended to (and looking the way the client had wanted it to look), was the site deemed to have been completed and ready to go live.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. Web templates allow the ”look and feel” of the website to be created separately from the page content. Having ready-made templates helped to speed up the process of developing web sites and resulted in lowered production costs. This also allowed web site development firms to expand their services to include business clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses adopting “template-based” web design services increased, templates started being developed that could provide different custom options, like the ability to switch colors, styles, layouts
As websites and website building software developed, web templates also began to evolve into website templating “systems” that enabled website owners to manage the visual aspects of a website.
And then, WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new online publishing 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 expand website templating systems even further.
A WP theme controls every aspect of your web design. It lets you add a “skin” to your entire site in a similar way that a web template system does but also gives you complete control over the management and ability to customize the site’s 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 quote states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of the WP theme is that how your web site displays to site visitors is an entirely separate system from the way your website works internally to handle areas like content management and functionality.
In plain English terms, what this means is that you can change the appearance of your website as often as you want without touching your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have set up your website for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this great news for businesses?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your website’s design is done. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any theme you want, and then completely customize the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in minutes, whenever you choose … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site with no web design knowledge necessary. Just pick a WP theme you want, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like headers, page layout, style settings and more in a few seconds …
As WordPress is made available as open source software, professional web design companies can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that thousands of great WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are generally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of excellent website templates completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – Free WordPress Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider range of uses.
WordPress themes vary from minimal-looking, to designs that are visually breathtaking and could typically cost thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, WP themes are quite inexpensive to purchase.
You can view several WP theme galleries that include many examples of WP themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WP Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing website development tools that require traditional web template design:
Easy To Install
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin section and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large community of commercial website developers who, collectively, contribute thousands of fantastic WordPress Themes available to users. Many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This allows you replace WordPress themes as often as you like without changing the settings.
- Many WP themes come with additional functionality and options that let you easily customize the theme’s style and design properties and create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets you update themes to a newer theme version without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically right inside the site’s administration interface.
- WordPress themes helps you save hundreds of dollars on web design costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally quite affordable.
Responsive Theme Design
Many theme designers are now creating WP themes that incorporate “responsive” web design.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can navigate, read and load a site on most device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to install additional browser tools.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your web site works on all of your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards and practices of web design and web coding.
I hope that the above overview has helped you gain a clearer understanding of themes, what WordPress themes are, how WP themes can help you and your business save money, and how themes make customizing your web design easy.
To learn where to search for great themes for your website or blog, go 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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