Flexible web publishing platforms like WordPress have truly simplified web design and web development for anyone wanting a website.
This is a great thing for non-technical users planning to run a web presence that they can easily manage by themselves.
Before blogging and the development of user-friendly CMS software, if you wanted to get a web site for your business, you had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This process could mean weeks, even sometimes many months of waiting!
The development of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this post, we look at what themes are, how WordPress themes save you and your business money on website design costs, and how WP themes allow you to easily customize your site.
Web Design Revolution
More website owners have benefited from a change in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a small business, you may want to know about this, because it can save your business thousands of dollars on web development or website design costs.
Let’s briefly review what used to happen before WordPress was introduced:
The first step would be to meet with a website development company or web designer for a brief. After that, the ”look and feel” of the web site itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This involved spending time with a professional website designer going over things of the web site such as the, colors, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Every page of your site then had to be individually created with all of your design elements and codes scripted into the page content. All pages were then assembled together into a web site using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files required to make your website work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and was functioning how it was supposed to (and looking the way the client had wanted it to look), was the website deemed to be completed and ready to go live.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. A website template allows ”look and feel” elements of the website to be created separately from the page content. The development of template elements helped speed up the web site creation process and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also enabled web development firms to service business clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses adopting “template-based” websites increased, templates started being developed that provided various customization features and options, such as the option to switch colours, styles, layouts
As websites and web building applications developed, website templates also began transforming into web template “systems” that let website owners customize their site’s visual aspects.
And then, WordPress was introduced and helped to kick off 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:
The WordPress Theme
WordPress themes push web templating systems one step further.
A WordPress theme controls and integrates all of the design areas of a website. It lets you add a “skin” to your entire site in a similar way that a website template system does but it provides you with more control over the management, appearance 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 quote states, one of the unique features of WordPress is that the way your web site looks to visitors is a completely separate thing from the management of your content.
Basically, what this means is that you can change the look and feel of your website 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 WP site has been configured for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be done. You can get your business website built simply and start with any WordPress theme you want, and then completely edit the look, feel and design of your site in seconds, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site without the need of web design skills. Just choose any WP theme you like, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your web design and modify elements like headers, page layout, typography and more in minutes …
As WordPress is open source software, professional web designers can create themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that loads of great WP themes are made available to WP users. WordPress are generally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of excellent WP themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Theme Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider range of uses.
WP themes range from bare-looking, to fancy designs that are visually impressive and could easily cost thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most themes can be purchased fairly inexpensively, especially when compared to what you would have been charged if a web designer had to code it from scratch.
You can view a number of theme galleries containing many examples of themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Themes
Here are just some of the many benefits of choosing WordPress themes over choosing traditional web template design:
Ready To Go To Work In Minutes
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your administrator login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free WordPress theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving online community of professional theme developers who contribute thousands of professional WP Themes available to WordPress users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent look across all of the blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This allows you change themes as often as you need without modifying the site’s underlying content.
- Many WP themes provide additional features and options that allow you to customize your theme’s layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows you to update the theme to newer theme versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically within the dashboard.
- Themes allow WordPress users to save thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are typically quite inexpensive.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many theme designers are now creating “responsive” WP themes.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically resize to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. PCs, iPads, smart phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different platforms. Users can navigate, read and display a site on various device platforms without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional display elements.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your web site will work correctly across all of your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards of web design and web coding.
We hope that this post 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 themes let you easily customize your WP site.
In the next blog post in our article series for non-technical users on basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for the best WordPress themes for your blog.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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