Flexible website management applications like WordPress have effectively simplified web design and web development for non-technical web users.
This greatly benefits non-technical users planning to run a website that is simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Before “blogging” and the development of easy-to-use CMS tools, if you needed a business website, you typically would have to wait until both the website development and web design processes were fully completed. This could mean waiting around for weeks, sometimes even many months!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this post, we take a look at what themes are, how they save you money on website design costs, and how WordPress themes allow you to easily customize your website.
Website Design Evolution
Businesses will benefit from a tremendous change in website design that started a number of years ago. If you own a business, you may want to know more about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on website development and web design costs.
In a nutshell, this is what typically happened before WordPress came along:
First, you would discuss your requirements with a web site development agency or designer. After that, the actual “web design” itself had to be discussed and agreed upon. This involved time being spent with someone with website design skills going over elements of the site like the, colours, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be individually created with the design elements and scripts coded into the page content. All of the pages were then assembled together into a web site using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files required to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and worked the way it should (and looking the way the client had imagined it to look), was the site deemed as being finished and ready to go live.
The next stage in the evolution of business website design was the introduction of “website templates”. Website templates allow presentation elements of the website to be created separately from the page content. Having ready-made templates helped speed up the web site creation process and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also enabled web site development companies to work with businesses with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses began adopting “template-based” web design services, web templates started being introduced to provide various customization features and options, like the option to switch colors, styles, layouts
As websites and web building applications evolved, web templates also began evolving into website templating ”systems”, letting users control their web site’s design elements.
And then, WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new 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:
The WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme takes web template systems one step further.
A WordPress theme controls and unifies the design aspects of your website. It allows you to add a “skin” to your site similarly to what a website template system does but it also also provides you with more control over the management, presentation and customization of template options.
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 stated in the quote above, one of the unique and revolutionary features of WordPress is that how your web site appears to site visitors externally in no way affects the way your content is managed.
In plain English terms, what this means is that themes let you change the appearance of your website as much and as often as you like without affecting your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if WordPress site has been set up for e-commerce, replacing the 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 intact, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this really great for small businesses?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any WordPress theme you like, and then edit the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in mere minutes, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WordPress site without needing any web coding skills. Simply pick a theme you want, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your website design and modify elements like header images, page layout, typography and more in a few seconds …
Since WordPress is open source software, professional website design companies from all over the world can design themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP template system.
This means that thousands of high quality WordPress themes are made available to WordPress users. Themes are generally distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to access thousands of excellent website templates completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider range of uses.
WP themes vary from functional-looking, to designs that are simply stunning and would easily cost thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most premium themes can be bought very cheaply, especially when you compare the cost to what it would have cost you if a website designer had to develop it from scratch.
You can see a number of WordPress theme galleries containing many examples of great premium WordPress themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using traditional website design:
Ready To Use In Very Little Time
WP themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your admin section and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing online community of commercial theme developers who contribute thousands of great-looking, high quality WP Themes available to WP users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all of the blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This allows you replace themes as often as you need without affecting your site information.
- Many WordPress themes provide additional built-in features and settings that let you easily customize your site’s layout, style and design properties and create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets you upgrade the theme to newer versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from your dashboard.
- Themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on website development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally quite inexpensive.
Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many WP theme developers are now creating “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different types of devices. Users can scroll, read and load the site on various device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to have installed additional themes.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your web site will work correctly on your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards, practices and techniques of website design and coding.
Hopefully, this article has helped you gain a clearer understanding of WP themes, what WP themes are, how they can help you and your business save money on web design costs, and how WordPress themes make customizing your web design easy.
To learn where to find the best WordPress themes for your blog, go here:
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