Powerful website publishing tools like the WordPress CMS platform have effectively simplified web design and web development for business owners.
This greatly benefits entrepreneurial-minded people thinking about getting a website that they can fully manage by themselves.
Prior to blogging and the introduction of powerful and simple CMS applications, if you wanted a website, you normally would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This could mean waiting for weeks, sometimes even many months!
The development of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this post, we explain what WordPress themes are, how themes save you money on website development costs, and how themes let you easily customize your WP site.
Web Site Design Evolution
Businesses have been benefiting from a revolution in web design that has been going for many years now. If you are a business owner, you will want to learn about this, because it can save your business thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
Let’s review what used to happen before WordPress were developed:
First, you would meet with a web developer or designer for a brief. After this, the actual design would be discussed and agreed upon. This involved spending time and money with someone with web design skills going over areas of your web site such as the, colors, formats, graphic elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all of the elements and codes scripted into the content. All pages were then assembled into a web site using hyperlinks and 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 after everything passed testing and worked how it was intended to (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the site considered as being finished and ready to go live.
Then, website “templates” came along”. Web templates allow presentation elements of the web site to be worked on separately from content on the page. Having templates helped to make the process of building web sites faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also allowed website designers to service small business clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of web site development companies choosing “template-based” websites increased, web templates started being designed that could offer different custom options, such as the ability to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and website editor tools evolved, web templates also began to transform into website template “systems” that let users manage the visual elements of a web site.
And then, a “blogging” tool called WordPress was introduced and helped to kick off a new online publishing 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
WordPress themes push website template systems much further.
A WordPress theme controls every aspect of your web design. It allows you to add a “skin” to your entire site much like a template system does but also gives you complete control over the management, appearance and customization aspects of your site’s 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, one of the unique features of the WordPress theme is that how your website looks to visitors externally is kept independent of how your content is managed.
In plain English terms, what this means is that a WP theme lets you change the appearance of your website as often as you like without touching your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have set up WP site for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your web site. All e-commerce features, plugin 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 web design to be completed. You can get your business website built quickly and get started with any WP theme you like, and then modify the entire look, feel and design of your site in mere seconds, whenever you choose … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site with no website code development knowledge necessary. Simply choose any theme you like, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and customize elements like headers, layout, styling options and more in less than a few minutes …
Because WordPress is open source software, commercial website design companies anywhere in the world can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WP users. WP are usually distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE directory of WP themes which allows WordPress users to access thousands of great WordPress themes for free …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider audience of web users.
WP themes vary from professional-looking, to elegant designs that are quite spectacular and would normally cost many hundreds of dollars to design. Surprisingly, themes can be bought very cheaply, especially when you compare the price to what you would have had to pay if a website designer had to code it from scratch.
You can view several theme galleries that include stunning examples of themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just some of the many benefits of choosing WordPress themes over choosing applications that require traditional web template design:
Installation Is Easy, Quick & Simple
WP themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin to your Plugins folder via your WP dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WP dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large community of professional theme developers and development companies who make thousands of excellent WordPress Themes available to WP users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This means you can change the “look and feel” of your site as often as you want without disturbing your blog content.
- Many themes come with additional built-in features and settings that enable you to customize the theme’s layout, style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables users to update themes to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from the site’s administration interface.
- Themes helps you save thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally very affordable.
Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many WP theme designers are now creating WP themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can scroll, read and display a site on most if not all device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional display elements.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your web site works across all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards and practices of web design and web coding.
We hope the above article has given you a clearer overview of themes, what themes are, how themes can help you save money on website development costs, and how WordPress themes allow you to easily customize a web site.
In the next blog post in the article series on helping you understand WordPress features, we show you where to search for the best themes for your website.
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