Advanced content management applications like WordPress have effectively improved web design and web development for non-technical website owners.
This is a great thing for business owners planning to start a website that they can easily manage themselves.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of user-friendly content management systems, if you wanted a professional business site, you would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This process could take many weeks, sometimes even months!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this article, you will learn what themes are, how WP themes help you and your business save money on website design costs, and how themes make it easy to customize your website.
Revolutionary Website Design
More website owners today are benefiting from an evolution in web design that has been going for several years now. 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 website design costs.
Let’s go over what normally took place before WordPress was introduced:
First, you would meet with a website development agency or web site designer for a brief. Then, the design would be discussed and agreed upon. This involved spending time and money with someone with web design skills discussing things of the web site such as the, colors, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be individually created with all of the design elements and scripts coded into the page content. The pages were then assembled into a website using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file required to make your website work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and worked how it should (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the site deemed to have been finished and ready to go live.
Then, website “templates” came along”. A website template allows ”look and feel” elements of the website to be created separately from the page content. The introduction of templates helped to make the process of site creation faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also allowed website development agencies to work with smaller business clients and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web site development firms began choosing “template-based” web design services, web templates were created to provide different custom options, such as the ability to choose different colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and website building software evolved, website templates also started to evolve into web template “systems” that let website owners and website developers control their web site’s design aspects.
Then, 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:
The WordPress Theme
WordPress themes push web templating systems even further.
A WordPress theme controls and unifies every aspect of your website design. It lets you add a “skin” over your entire site similarly to what a template system does but also provides users with more control over the management and customization aspects of template features.
As explained 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 the above quote states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of the WordPress theme is that how your web site looks to site visitors externally is managed separately from your site’s functionality and content management.
Basically, what this means is that a theme lets you modify the look and feel of your site as often as you want without touching your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have configured WordPress site for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your business website built quickly and get started with any WP theme you want, and then completely modify the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in mere seconds, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site without requiring any web design knowledge. Simply pick any theme you want, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your web design and customize elements like headers, page layout, style settings and more in minutes …
As WordPress is made available as open source software, hundreds of web design companies anywhere in the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes are made available to WP users. WP are generally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE directory of WP themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – WP Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider range of uses.
WordPress themes range from minimal-looking, to clever designs that are visually stunning and could easily cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, themes can be purchased fairly 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 WP theme galleries that include stunning examples of themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of choosing WordPress themes over using website development tools that require traditional website design:
Fast Installation
WordPress themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip folder that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress site’s admin area.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large online community of professional website designers who, collectively, make thousands of great WP Themes available to WordPress users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all your site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This makes it possible to replace WordPress themes as often as you want without disturbing your underlying content.
- Many WP themes come with additional functionality and options that enable you to easily customize the site’s style and design properties and create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables users to upgrade the theme to a newer theme version without losing its unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically from the admin panel.
- Themes lets you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically very affordable.
About Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many theme designers are now developing themes that incorporate “responsive” web design.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. PCs, iPads, cell phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can scroll, read and display a site on a range of devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser tools.
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 will display correctly across all of your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards, practices and techniques of website design.
Hopefully, the above article has given you a clearer understanding of themes, what themes are, how themes can help your business save money on website design costs, and how WP themes make it easy to customize your WordPress site.
To learn where to search for the best WordPress themes for your website or blog, go here:
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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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