Advanced content publishing platforms like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have truly simplified web design and web development for web users.
This is a great thing for non-technical users planning on getting a digital presence that they can fully manage themselves.
Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of advanced content management systems, if you wanted to get a professional site built for your business, you had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were completely done. This could mean waiting around for many weeks, even months!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this blog post, you will learn what themes are, how they help your business save money on website development costs, and how WP themes allow you to easily customize your site.
Web Design Revolution
More businesses today are benefiting from a revolutionary change in web design that started several years ago. If you own a small business, you will want to learn about this, because it can save you thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s what happened before WordPress were introduced:
First, you would discuss your project with a web site developer or web site designer. After that, the actual design of your web site had to be decided upon. This involved time and money being spent with someone with website design skills going over areas of the web site like the, colors, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all of the design elements and scripts coded into the content. All pages were then assembled into a web site using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and was functioning how it should (and looking the way a client had wanted it to look), was the site deemed to be finished and ready for delivery.
The next step in the evolution of business website design was the introduction of “website templates”. A web site template allows presentation elements of the website to be worked on separately from content on the page. Having template elements helped to speed up the process of developing web sites and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also enabled web site development companies to expand their services to include smaller business clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses adopting “template-based” web design services increased, web templates were introduced that provided clients with expanding custom features and options, such as color palettes, the ability to specify different styles, formats, elements, page layouts, etc …
As web sites and web editor tools developed, web templates also started transforming into website templating ”systems”, letting users manage their website’s visual components.
And then, a “blogging” software called WordPress was developed 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:
WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme pushes the concept of a web templating system much further.
The WP theme system controls and integrates every aspect of your web design. It lets you add a “skin” over your entire site similarly to what a template system does but it provides you with more control over the management, appearance and ability to customize your site’s template settings.
According to 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, a unique feature of WordPress is that the way your website appears to site visitors does not affect the way your site is configured internally to handle areas like content management and functionality.
Basically, what this means is that a WordPress theme lets you modify the look and feel of your site as much and as often as you want without modifying your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if WP website has been set up for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your website. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be completed. You can get your website built simply and get started with any WP theme you like, and completely change the look, feel and design of your site in mere seconds, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site with no web code programming skills required. Simply choose any theme you want, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your web design and modify elements like header images, page layout, styling options and more in minutes …
As WordPress is made available as open source software, website design companies can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of great WP themes are made available to WP users. WordPress are usually distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent WordPress themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – WP Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider range of uses.
Themes range from professional-looking, to designs that are quite impressive and could easily cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, WP themes can be bought quite inexpensively, especially when compared to what it would have cost you if a website designer had to create it from scratch.
You can view a number of theme galleries containing many examples of great themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over using web development tools that require traditional website design:
WordPress Theme Installation Is Easy, Simple & Quick
WP themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large community of professional theme designers who, collectively, make thousands of professional WordPress Themes available to WP users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent look across all of your site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This means you can change themes as often as you want without deleting the website’s information.
- Many WP themes provide built-in functionality and settings that enable you to customize the site’s layout, style and design properties to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that allows you to upgrade themes to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically right within the site’s administration interface.
- Themes allow users to save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically very inexpensive.
About Responsive Themes
Many theme developers are now creating WP themes that incorporate “responsive” web design.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. PCs, tablets, smart phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different platforms. Users can navigate, read and display the site on various devices without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional themes.
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 website will display correctly on 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 website design.
Hopefully, this post has given you a good overview of themes, what WordPress themes are, how WordPress themes can help you save money, and how WordPress themes make customizing web sites easy.
In our next article in our article series for non-technical users on understanding basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for great WP themes for your website.
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