Powerful web publishing tools like WordPress have truly improved web design and web development for users.
This greatly benefits individuals or businesses planning to start a web presence that they can fully manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of powerful CMS solutions, if you wanted a site, you would have to wait until both the website development and web design processes were completely done. This process could take weeks, sometimes even months!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this blog post, we will explore what WordPress themes are, how themes save you and your business money on web development costs, and how WordPress themes let you easily customize your website.
Web Design Revolution
Businesses, especially small businesses, will benefit from a great 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 learn about this, because it can save you thousands of dollars on website development and web design costs.
Let’s take a look at what used to happen before tools like WordPress were developed:
The first step would be to meet with a website developer or web site designer for a brief. Next, the design itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This meant spending time and money with someone with web site design skills going over design elements of the web site such as the, colors, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all the elements and codes inserted into the page content. The pages were then assembled into a website using links and custom coded 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 once everything passed testing and was performing the way it should (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the web site deemed to have been completed and ready for delivery.
The next step in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “web templates”. Website templates allow ”look and feel” elements of the website to be created separately from content on the page. Having templates helped speed up the website creation process and resulted in lowered production costs. This also enabled web developers to work with smaller business clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses started choosing “template-based” websites, web templates started being developed that could provide clients with expanding customizable features and options, such as the ability to choose different colors, styles, layouts
As websites and web editing software developed, web templates also started to transform into website templating ”systems”, letting website owners customize the design elements of their website.
Then, WordPress was introduced and helped to kick off a new digital 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:
About WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme drives the idea of a web template system much further.
The WordPress theme system controls all of the design areas of your website. It allows you to add a “skin” over your site similarly to what a web template system does but it provides you with more control over the management, presentation and customization of 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 states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of WordPress is that how your web site appears to visitors is kept independent of your site’s content management settings.
In simple terms, what this means is that a WordPress theme lets you modify the look and feel of your website as much and as often as you want without affecting your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if your site has been configured 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, site and plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when your website is powered by WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your business website built simply and start with any WordPress theme you want, and then customize the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in a few seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site with no web coding knowledge necessary. Just choose any WordPress theme you want, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your website design and customize elements like header images, layout, style settings and more in a few seconds …
Since WordPress is made available as open source software, web design companies can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that thousands of great WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. WP are usually distributed freely under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of great WP themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider range of users.
Themes range from corporate-looking, to creative designs that are visually spectacular and could typically cost thousands of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most premium themes can be bought fairly inexpensively, especially when compared to what it would have cost you if a web designer had to code it from scratch.
You can see several WordPress theme galleries that include stunning examples of themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WP Themes – Benefits & Advantages
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over using traditional web design:
Fast Installation
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your admin user area and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving community of professional web designers who contribute thousands of excellent WP Themes available to WordPress users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all of your blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This means you can replace the “look and feel” of your templates as often as you need without modifying the settings.
- Many WP themes come with built-in features and settings that enable you to customize the theme’s style and design properties to create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that lets you upgrade themes to a newer theme version without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically right within your dashboard.
- WordPress themes lets you save thousands of dollars on website development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally quite affordable.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many WordPress theme designers are now developing WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different platforms. Users can navigate, read and load a site on different device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional themes.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website will work correctly on your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of website design and coding.
We hope the above article has provided you with a clearer overview of themes, what WP themes are, how they help you save money on web development costs, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize a site.
In the next blog post on understanding basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to find great WP themes for your blog.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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