The development of flexible web site publishing platforms like the WordPress CMS has truly improved web design and web development for web users.
This is a great thing for non-technical users planning to run a web presence that is relatively simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Prior to blogging and the development of easy-to-use CMS tools, if you wanted to get a professional site built for your business, you would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This process could mean waiting around for many weeks, even months!
The development of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this post, we explain what themes are, how themes save you and your business money on web development costs, and how themes allow you to easily customize your site.
Revolutionary Web Design
Website owners will benefit from a change in web design that has been going for several years now. If you are a small business owner, you will want to know more about this, because it can save your business a lot of time and money on web development or website design costs.
In a nutshell, this is how things typically worked in “traditional” web development before a CMS solution like WordPress was introduced:
The first step would be to discuss your project with a web site developer or designer. After that, the “web design” would be decided upon. This involved time being spent with someone with web site design skills going over design elements of your website like the, colours, formats, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be hand-coded with all of your design elements and scripts coded around the content. All pages were then assembled into a website using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and was performing the way it should (and looking the way a client had imagined it to look), was the site deemed to have been completed and ready to go live.
Then, website “templates” were introduced”. A web site template allows the presentation of the web site to be created separately from the page content. The introduction of templates helped to make website development faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also enabled website development firms to work with businesses and clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of website development companies adopting “template-based” websites increased, web templates started being introduced to provide clients with expanding customizable features, such as color palettes, the ability to specify different styles, formats, elements, page layouts, and so on.
As web sites and website editing tools developed, web templates also started to transform into website templating “systems” that let users and website developers customize the visual aspects of a web site.
And then, a “blogging” software called WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new business 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:
About WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme takes the concept of a website template system even further.
The WordPress theme system controls all of the design areas of your web site. It allows you to add a “skin” to your site much like a template system does but it gives you more control over the management and ability to customize all 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 states, one of the unique features of the WP theme is that how your web site looks to site visitors is managed independently of your site’s functional aspects (e.g. content management and functionality).
In simple terms, what this means is that WordPress themes let you modify the appearance of your site as much and as often as you want without affecting your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have set up your site for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your website’s design is done. You can get your website built simply and get started with any WordPress theme you like, and then completely edit the look, feel and design of your site in a few seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without requiring any web code editing knowledge. Just pick any WP theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and customize elements like header images, layout, styling options and more in minutes …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, commercial web design companies can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP template system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are normally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE directory of WordPress themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent WP themes for free …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
WordPress themes vary from functional-looking, to designs that are stunning and could normally cost thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most themes can be purchased fairly cheaply, especially when compared to what it would have cost you if a web designer had to code it from scratch.
You can see several theme galleries containing various examples of great premium 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 template design:
Ready To Go To Work In No Time
WP themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin area and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free WordPress theme repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving community of commercial theme designers and design companies who, collectively, make thousands of great WP Themes available to WordPress users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all of the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This allows you replace the “look and feel” of your site as often as you want without changing your website’s information.
- Many WP themes provide built-in functionality and settings that let you easily customize the site’s style, layout and design properties and create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows you to update themes to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically inside your site’s administration interface.
- Themes helps you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally quite affordable.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many theme developers are now creating “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically resize to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. computers, iPads, cell phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can scroll, read and load your site on a range of device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional themes.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will work 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, practices and techniques of website design and coding.
We hope that the above article has helped you gain a clearer understanding of themes, what themes are, how they can help you and your business save money on web development costs, and how WordPress themes let you easily customize a website.
In our next blog post on basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for the best themes for your blog.
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