The development of powerful web site management systems like the WordPress CMS has effectively simplified web design and web development for website owners.
This is a great thing for business owners planning to start or build a website that is easy to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of sophisticated CMS tools, if you needed a business web site, you had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were completely done. This could take many weeks, sometimes even months!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this blog post, we explain what themes are, how themes save your business money on web design costs, and how themes allow you to easily customize your site.
Web Site Design Revolution
More website owners are benefiting from a change in web design that started many years ago. If you own a business, you may want to know more about this, because it can save your business a lot of time and money on web development and website design costs.
Very briefly, here’s how things used to work in “traditional” website development before CMS software like WordPress came along:
First, you would discuss your requirements with a website developer or designer. After that, the design would be decided upon. This meant time and money being spent with a professional website designer discussing design elements of your site like the, colours, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be hand-coded with all of your design elements and scripts coded into the 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 all other files needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and worked how it was supposed to (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the site considered as being completed and ready for sign off.
Then, web design “templates” were introduced”. A web template allows the presentation of the web site to be worked on separately from content on the page. The introduction of templates helped speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in reduced production costs. This also enabled web site developers and designers to work with small businesses and clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses using “template-based” websites increased, templates started being designed that could offer expanding custom features, such as the ability to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and web building software evolved, website templates also started to transform into web template “systems” that let website owners and web developers customize the visual components of a website.
And then, WordPress came along 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 improve the idea of a website templating system further.
A WP theme controls every aspect of your site’s design. It lets you add a “skin” over your site similarly to what a web template system does but it also also provides users with more control over the management and customization of your 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 stated above, one of the unique features of a WordPress theme is that the way your web site appears to visitors is controlled independently of the way your content is managed.
Basically, what this means is that themes let you modify the design of your website as much and as often as you like without affecting your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if WordPress site has been set up for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. All e-commerce features, site and plugin 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 have to spend weeks or months waiting for your website design to be completed. You can get your business website built quickly and get started with any WP theme you want, and edit the entire look, feel and design of your site in a few minutes, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site without having website code development knowledge. Just choose a theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your site’s design and customize elements like headers, page layout, typography and more with just a couple of mouse clicks …
Since WordPress is made available as open source software, commercial website designers can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that thousands of great WP themes are made available to WordPress users. Themes are usually distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE directory of WordPress themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent WordPress themes for free …
(WordPress.org – WP Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider range of users.
Themes vary from corporate-looking, to creative designs that are spectacular and would typically cost thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, themes are very inexpensive to purchase.
You can view several theme galleries that include various examples of great premium WordPress themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional web design:
Ready To Start Using In No Time
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing community of commercial website developers and development companies who contribute thousands of professional WordPress Themes available to users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent design across all of the blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This makes it possible to swap themes as often as you like without modifying your underlying content of your web site.
- Many WordPress themes come with built-in features and options that enable you to easily customize the theme’s layout, style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that enables you to update themes to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically inside the admin panel.
- WordPress themes helps you save hundreds of dollars on web development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically quite inexpensive.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many WP theme developers are now developing WP themes that incorporate “responsive” functionality.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically resize to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can scroll, read and load the site on different device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser tools.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website works across all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards and practices of website design coding.
We hope the above article has given you a clearer understanding of themes, what WordPress themes are, how WordPress themes can help your business save money on web development costs, and how themes make customizing sites easy.
In our next article in our article series for non-technical users on basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for great WordPress themes for your blog.
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