The development of powerful web publishing systems like WordPress has effectively improved web design and web development for business owners.
This is a great thing for individuals or businesses thinking of building a website that they can easily manage.
Prior to blogging and the introduction of easy-to-use CMS applications, if you needed a business site, you would have to wait until both the website development and website design processes were completely done. This process could mean weeks, even many months of waiting for the work to be done!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this article, we take a look at what WordPress themes are, how themes save you money on web design costs, and how themes help you easily customize your site.
Web Design Evolution
More website owners will benefit from a revolutionary change in website design that started several years ago. If you own a business, you may want to know more about this, because it can save your business thousands of dollars on web development or web design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s what normally happened before applications like WordPress came along:
First, you would meet with a web development company or designer for a brief. After that, the actual “web design” would be discussed and agreed upon. This meant spending time and money with someone with web design skills going over design elements of your website like the layout, colours, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be individually created with all of your design elements and codes inserted into the page content. All of the pages were then assembled into a web site using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and performed the way it was intended to (and looking the way the client had imagined it to look), was the site considered to be finished and ready to go live.
The next stage in the evolution of web design was the introduction of “web templating elements”. A web site template allows the presentation of the website to be worked on separately from the page content. Having template elements helped make the process of building web sites faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also allowed web development agencies to expand their services to include businesses and clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of web development companies choosing “template-based” websites increased, templates were developed to offer clients with different customization settings, like colour palettes, the ability to select different formats and layouts, and so on.
As websites and website editor applications developed, web templates also started evolving into web templating ”systems”, allowing website owners to control their site’s visual elements.
And then, 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:
WordPress Themes
WordPress themes expand the concept of a web templating system one step further.
The WordPress theme system controls and unifies every aspect of your web site design. It allows you to add a “skin” to your site much like a web template system does but it also also gives you more control over the management and ability to customize template options.
As WordPress has explained in its web 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 states, a unique and revolutionary feature of the WP theme is that the way your website appears to site visitors is an entirely separate system from how your site works in the backend to handle areas like content management and functionality.
Basically, what this means is that a theme lets you modify the appearance of your site as much and as often as you like without touching your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have configured your site for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your web site. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when your website is built using WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your website design to be completed. You can get your business website built simply and start with any theme you want, and change the entire look, feel and design of your website in mere seconds, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without requiring any web code programming knowledge. Simply pick a theme you want, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your site’s design and modify elements like header images, layout, style settings and more in minutes …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, professional web design companies from all over the world 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. WordPress are normally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of great themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their digital presence, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider range of applications.
WP themes range from simple-looking, to designs that are beautiful and could easily cost many hundreds of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most WordPress themes are quite inexpensive to buy.
You can view several theme galleries containing stunning examples of WP themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional web template design:
Installation Is Easy & Fast
WordPress themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme directory at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing online community of professional theme designers who contribute thousands of fantastic WordPress Themes available to users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all of your blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This means you can change themes as often as you need without deleting the underlying content.
- Many themes provide built-in functionality and options that allow you to customize your theme’s layout, style and design properties and create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets users upgrade the theme to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically right within the site’s administration interface.
- Themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on web design costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally quite affordable.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many WP theme designers are now developing WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” functionality.
A responsive theme enables websites 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 navigate, read and display the site on various device platforms without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional themes.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website will work correctly on your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards, practices and techniques of website design coding.
We hope the above article has given you a clearer understanding of themes, what WordPress themes are, how themes can help your business save money on website development costs, and how WordPress themes make customizing your web design easy.
To learn where to find great WordPress themes for your website or blog, go here:
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