Powerful web publishing tools like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have truly simplified web design and web development for non-technical web users.
This is fantastic news for individuals or businesses that want to own a digital presence that is easy to manage.
Before “blogging” and the introduction of powerful CMS software, if you wanted a professional business site, you typically would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This process could mean waiting around for many weeks, even many months!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, you will learn what themes are, how themes can help you and your business save money on website design costs, and how WP themes allow you to easily customize your site.
A Revolution In Website Design
Businesses will benefit from an evolution in web design that has been going for many years now. If you own a small business, you will want to know more about this, because it could save you a lot of time and money on web development or web design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s what normally took place before CMS systems like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your requirements with a web site developer or designer. After this, the actual design itself would be decided upon. This required time being spent with someone with web design skills discussing things of your website like the, colors, styles, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be individually created with all the design elements and scripts coded around the content. All pages were then assembled into a website using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file required to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and was performing how it was intended to (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the website deemed to have been completed and ready to go live.
The next phase in the evolution of business website design was the introduction of “web templating elements”. Web templates allow presentation elements of the web site to be worked on separately from content on the page. The introduction of templates helped to speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in lowered production costs. This also allowed web site designers to expand their services to include smaller businesses with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses adopting “template-based” websites increased, templates started being developed that could provide different customizable settings, like the ability to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As websites and web building applications developed, website templates also began to transform into website templating ”systems”, letting website owners and website developers manage the design components of a site.
Then, a “blogging” software called 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:
WordPress Themes
WordPress themes improve website template systems further.
A WP theme controls every aspect of your site’s design. It allows you to add a “skin” over your site in a similar way that a web template system does but it also also gives you more control over the management, presentation and ability to customize all 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 the WordPress theme is that how your web site appears to visitors on the outside does not affect the way your site works internally to handle areas like content management and functionality.
Basically, what this means is that a WordPress theme lets you modify the design of your site 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 WordPress site has been set up for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your web site. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when your site is built with WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any WP theme you like, and completely edit the look, feel and design of your website in a few seconds, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without needing website design skills. Just pick a WordPress theme you want, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and customize elements like header images, layout, style settings and more in a few seconds …
Since WordPress is open source software, web designers can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. WordPress are generally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to access thousands of excellent themes for free …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now focused on developing themes for a wider range of applications.
WordPress themes range from functional-looking, to designs that are simply impressive and could typically cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most WordPress themes are really inexpensive.
You can view a number of theme galleries that include many examples of great premium themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over using web development tools that require traditional web template design:
WP Theme Installation Is Easy And Simple
WP themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your administrator section and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving community of professional theme designers who make thousands of excellent WP Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all the site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This allows you replace the “look and feel” of your site as often as you need without deleting your website’s underlying settings.
- Many themes provide additional built-in features and options that allow you to easily customize the site’s layout and design properties and create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that lets you update themes to newer versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically from your site’s administration interface.
- Themes helps you save hundreds of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally quite affordable.
About Responsive Themes
Many theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes for the WordPress CMS.
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 platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can scroll, read and display a site on various devices without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to install additional display elements.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website works 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 web coding.
Hopefully, the above article has given you a clearer understanding of themes, what WordPress themes are, how they can help you and your business save money, and how WP themes make it easy to customize a WP site.
In the next blog post in the article series on helping you understand features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for the best themes for your website.
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