Advanced web management platforms like the WordPress CMS have effectively simplified web design and web development for website owners.
This is a great thing for business owners that want an online business presence that they can fully manage.
Before “blogging” and the introduction of user-friendly content management systems, if you needed to get a website for your business, you typically had to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This process could mean weeks, even sometimes many months of waiting around!
WordPress themes changed all this. In this blog post, we explore what themes are, how they save you money on web development costs, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize your WordPress site.
A Revolution In Web Design
More website owners will benefit from a change in web design that has been going for a number of years now. If you are a small business owner, you will want to know more about this, because it can save your business thousands of dollars on website development or website design costs.
Very briefly, this is how things typically worked in “traditional” web design before WordPress was introduced:
The first step would be to meet with a website development firm or website designer for a brief. Then, the actual “web design” had to be decided upon. This required time and money being spent with a professional web designer discussing elements of your site such as the layout, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be hand-coded with all of the elements and scripts coded into your content. The pages were then assembled into a website 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 once everything passed testing and was functioning how it should (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the website considered to have been finished and ready to go live.
The next stage in the evolution of business website design was the introduction of “website templates”. Web site templates allow presentation elements of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. Having templates helped speed up the web development process and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also allowed web developers to expand their services to include businesses with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses choosing “template-based” websites increased, web templates started being designed to provide expanding custom options, like colour palettes, the ability to select different styles and elements, and so on.
As websites and website editing software evolved, web templates also started evolving into web template ”systems”, letting users and web developers customize their site’s design elements.
Then, a “blogging” application called WordPress came along 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 improve the concept of a website template system even further.
The WordPress theme system controls and integrates every aspect of your site’s design. It allows you to add a “skin” to your entire site in a similar way that a web template system does but also provides users with complete control over the management, appearance and customization aspects of your template features.
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 above, a unique and revolutionary feature of a WordPress theme is that the way your website appears to visitors is managed separately from the way your content is managed.
In simple terms, what this means is that you can modify the appearance of your site as often as you want without touching your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if WordPress website has been set up for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this such great news for business owners?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any WP theme you like, and completely customize the look, feel and design of your website in a few seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site with no website code development skills required. Just choose any theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and customize elements like header images, page layout, style settings and more with just a couple of mouse clicks …
Because WordPress is distributed as open source software, website design companies can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that thousands of great WordPress themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. WordPress are normally distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of great themes for free …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
Themes vary from corporate-looking, to designs that are simply stunning and would typically cost many hundreds of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, themes are quite inexpensive to buy.
You can view a number of WordPress theme galleries containing many examples of great WordPress themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Using WordPress Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing applications that require traditional web template design:
Easy To Install
WP themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your WordPress administrator account and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free theme directory at WordPress.org) directly inside your WordPress site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving online community of commercial web designers who, collectively, make thousands of great-looking, high quality WP Themes available to WordPress users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all of your site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This allows you change the “look and feel” of your website as often as you need without disturbing the blog settings.
- Many themes come with built-in functionality and options that enable you to customize your site’s style, layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that allows users to update the theme to a newer theme version without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically within the admin panel.
- WP themes allow WP users to save hundreds of dollars on web design costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally quite affordable.
Responsive WP Theme Design
Many theme developers are now developing WP themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different types of devices. Users can navigate, read and display a site on different device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional browser elements.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website works on 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 website design and coding.
We hope this post has provided you with a good overview of WP themes, what WP themes are, how WP themes help you save money on website design costs, and how WordPress themes let you easily customize a site.
To learn where to search for great themes for your website or blog, click here:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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