Powerful web publishing applications like the WordPress CMS platform have truly improved web design and web development for users.
This is fantastic news for businesses planning to start a website that is relatively simple and easy to manage.
Prior to blogging and the introduction of advanced CMS software, if you wanted a website, you normally would have to wait until both the website development and website design processes were fully completed. This process could take weeks, even many months!
The introduction of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, we take a look at what WP themes are, how WP themes save your business money on web development costs, and how WordPress themes allow you to easily customize your website.
The Evolution Of Website Design
More businesses today are benefiting from a great change in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a business owner, you will want to learn more about this, because it can save your business thousands of dollars on website development or web design costs.
Let’s review what happened before software like WordPress were developed:
First, you would discuss your requirements with a website developer or web designer. After that, the “web design” would be decided upon. This required time and money being spent with someone with web design skills discussing design elements of your website like the, colors, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be hand-coded with all your design elements and scripts coded into the page content. The pages were then assembled together into a web site using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and was functioning how it was supposed to (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the website considered to have been completed and ready to go live.
The next stage in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “web templating elements”. A web site template allows ”look and feel” elements of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. The introduction of templates helped make the process of web site development faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also allowed web site development firms to service smaller business clients and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses adopting “template-based” websites increased, web templates were created that provided various custom settings, such as color palettes, the ability to select different menu styles, formats, header, footer and navigation elements, page layouts, etc …
As web sites and web building software evolved, website templates also began evolving into web template “systems” that enable website owners to customize the design components of their site.
Then, a “blogging” tool called WordPress was developed 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:
The WordPress Theme
WordPress themes take the idea of a web template system much further.
A WP theme controls and integrates the design elements of the website. It allows you to add a “skin” over your site in a similar way that a template system does but it also also gives you more control over the management and ability to customize your site’s template options.
As stated in 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 and revolutionary features of WordPress is that the way your web site displays to visitors does not affect how your site is configured internally to handle areas like content management and functionality.
In simple terms, what this means is that WP themes let you change the design of your website as much and as often as you want without touching your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if your website has been configured for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your web site. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this important?
Because when your site is built using WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your website built simply and start with any WP theme you want, and then customize the entire look, feel and design of your site in seconds, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site with no web code editing knowledge necessary. Simply pick a WP theme you want, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your site’s design and modify elements like headers, page layout, style settings and more in minutes …
Since WordPress is open source software, web design companies all around the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP template system.
This means that thousands of great WordPress themes are made available to WP users. Themes are generally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of great WordPress themes for free …
(WordPress.org – Free WP Theme Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their content online, more designers are now focused on developing themes for a wider audience of web users.
WordPress themes range from simple-looking, to exciting designs that are visually impressive and would easily cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, themes can be purchased very cheaply, especially when compared to what it would have cost you if a web designer had to create it from scratch.
You can view a number of WordPress theme galleries containing stunning examples of great premium WP themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using tools that require traditional website design:
Easy To Install
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP admin section and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free WordPress theme directory at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing online community of professional website designers and design companies who make thousands of professional WP Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all your site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This makes it possible to replace themes as often as you need without modifying the underlying content.
- Many WordPress themes provide additional built-in features and settings that allow you to customize your site’s style and design properties to create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that allows users to update the theme to a newer theme version without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically directly from within your dashboard.
- Themes helps you save hundreds of dollars on web design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally quite affordable.
Responsive Themes
Many theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can scroll, read and display a site on various device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to install additional display elements.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we recommend choosing 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, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards and practices of web design and web coding.
We hope the above overview has given you a clearer understanding about themes, what themes are, how themes help you and your business save money, and how WP themes allow you to easily customize your website.
In the next blog post in the article WP beginners on basic WP features, we show you where to search for great themes for your website.
***
"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
***