Advanced content publishing platforms like WordPress have truly simplified web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This is a great thing for business owners thinking about starting a digital presence that is relatively simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Before blogging and the introduction of powerful content management systems, if you needed a site, you typically would have to wait until both the web development and website design processes were completely done. This process could mean weeks, even many months of waiting for the work to be done!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how themes help your business save money, and how WP themes let you easily customize your WordPress site.
Website Design Evolution
More businesses have been benefiting from a great change in web design that has been going for many years now. If you own a small business, you may want to know about this, because it could save you a lot of time and money on web development and website design costs.
Let’s briefly review how things worked in “traditional” web development before a CMS application like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a web developer or designer for a brief. Next, the actual “web design” would be decided upon. This required spending time and money with someone with web site design skills going over elements of your website such as the, colours, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be hand-coded with all the elements and scripts coded into the content. All pages were then assembled together into a web site using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and functioned how it was supposed to (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the site deemed to have been completed and ready to go live.
Then, website “templates” came along”. Web site templates allow the presentation of the website to be worked on separately from content on the page. The development of ready-made templates helped make the process of web site development faster and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed web designers to expand their services to include business clients and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of website development firms using “template-based” web design services increased, web templates were developed that could provide various customization features and options, such as colour palettes, the ability to specify different formats or elements, etc …
As web sites and web editing tools evolved, web templates also began transforming into web templating “systems” that let users customize the visual aspects of their web site.
And then, a “blogging” application called WordPress came along and helped to start 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
WordPress themes push the idea of a website templating system one step further.
A WP theme controls and integrates every aspect of your web design. It allows you to add a “skin” to your site similarly to what a template system does but it gives you more control over the management, appearance and ability to customize the site’s template features.
As WordPress explains in its 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 how your website looks to site visitors externally is kept independent of how your site is configured internally to handle areas like content management and functionality.
In plain English terms, what this means is that a theme lets you modify the design of your website as much and as often as you like without affecting your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if your site has been set up for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your website. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when your website is powered with WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your site’s web design is done. You can get your website built simply and start with any theme you like, and change the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in mere seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site without having web code editing skills. Simply choose any WP theme you want, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and customize elements like headers, page layout, styling options and more in less than a few minutes …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, website designers can create themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP template system.
This means that loads of great WordPress themes are made available to WP users. WP are generally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of excellent website templates at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Theme Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their digital presence, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider range of uses.
Themes vary from minimal-looking, to artsy designs that are quite stunning and would typically cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, WordPress themes can be purchased very cheaply, especially when compared to what you would have had to pay if a website designer had to code it from scratch.
You can see a number of theme galleries that include many examples of great WordPress themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using applications that require traditional website design:
Installation Is Easy And Quick
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your administrator area and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free WordPress theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving online community of professional website designers and design companies who, collectively, make thousands of excellent WordPress Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all of your blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This means you can replace the “look and feel” of your web site or blog as often as you want without disturbing the blog settings.
- Many WordPress themes come with additional features and options that allow you to customize your theme’s style, layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that lets you update the theme to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically right within the dashboard.
- Themes allow users to save thousands of dollars on web design costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically very affordable.
Responsive WordPress Themes
Many theme developers are now creating WP themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can scroll, read and display a site on all devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional browser tools.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website will display correctly on all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of web design and coding.
I hope that the above article has given you a better understanding of WordPress themes, what themes are, how themes help you save money, and how themes make customizing web sites easy.
To learn where to find great themes for your website or blog, visit this page: Where To Get Great Paid And Free Responsive WordPress Templates Online.
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