The development of web publishing technologies like WordPress has truly improved web design and web development for business users.
This is fantastic news for non-technical users that want a website that they can easily manage themselves.
Before blogging and the introduction of easy-to-use content management systems, if you needed to get a professional website built for your business, you normally had to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This could take weeks, sometimes even many months!
The introduction of WordPress themes changed all this. In this article, we explore what WordPress themes are, how WordPress themes save you and your business money on web design costs, and how WordPress themes let you easily customize your WP site.
Web Design Revolution
Businesses are benefiting from a revolution in website design that started many years ago. If you are a business owner, you will want to learn more about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on website development or web design costs.
Let’s take a look at how things typically worked in “traditional” web design before WordPress was developed:
First, you would discuss your project with a web site development company or designer. After this, the actual “web design” would be discussed and agreed upon. This required spending time with someone with website design skills going over design elements of your website like the layout, colours, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be individually created with all your elements and codes written into your content. All pages were then assembled together into a website using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file needed to make your website work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and performed how it was supposed to (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the site deemed to be completed and ready to go live.
Then, web design “templates” were introduced”. A web site template allows the presentation of the web site to be created separately from the page content. Having template elements helped speed up the website creation process and resulted in lowered production costs. This also enabled web site developers to work with smaller businesses and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web site development companies started using “template-based” websites, web templates started being developed to provide clients with various customizable features and options, such as the option to switch colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and web editor tools developed, web templates also began to evolve into web template “systems” that permit website owners to manage their site’s design components.
And then, WordPress was introduced 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
A WordPress theme takes web template systems much further.
The WordPress theme system controls and unifies every aspect of your website design. It allows you to add a “skin” over your site in a similar way that a web template system does but it also also provides you with complete control over the management, appearance and customization of template settings.
As the official WordPress site states …
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, a unique and revolutionary feature of the WordPress theme is that the way your website looks to site visitors externally is a completely separate thing from the way your content is managed.
In plain English terms, what this means is that WP themes let you change the appearance of your site as much and as often as you want without affecting your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if WP website has been set up for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with another 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 huge! Why?
Because when your site is powered by WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your web design to be done. You can get your website built quickly and start with any theme you want, and completely modify the look, feel and design of your website in mere minutes, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WordPress site with no website code development knowledge required. Simply choose any WordPress theme you want, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like headers, layout, style settings and more in minutes …
As WordPress is open source software, website designers can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WP users. WordPress are normally distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) WP themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great WP themes for free …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider audience of WordPress site owners.
Themes range from corporate-looking, to designs that are impressive and would easily cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most WordPress themes are quite inexpensive to buy.
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 a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using applications that require traditional web design:
Fast And Easy Installation
WordPress themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply 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 theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large online community of commercial website designers and design companies who, collectively, make thousands of excellent WordPress Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all of the blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This makes it possible to swap themes as often as you need without disturbing the settings.
- Many WP themes come with additional built-in functionality and settings that allow you to easily customize your theme’s style, layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that lets you update the theme to newer versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically inside the site’s administration interface.
- Themes helps you save thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically very inexpensive.
About Responsive Themes
Many theme developers are now developing “responsive” WordPress themes.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. laptops, tablets, cell phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and display a site on various device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional browser elements.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will display correctly across all of your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards and practices of web design and web coding.
Hopefully, the above overview has helped you gain a better understanding about themes, what WordPress themes are, how WP themes can help you save money, and how WordPress themes make customizing web sites easy.
To learn where to search for the best WordPress themes for your website or blog, go here:
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