Powerful content management systems like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have effectively improved web design and web development for web users.
This is terrific news for entrepreneurial-minded people wanting an online presence that is relatively simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Prior to blogging and the introduction of powerful and simple content management systems, if you wanted a professional business site, you normally would have to wait until both the website development and web design processes were completely done. This could take weeks, sometimes even months!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this blog post, you will learn what themes are, how WordPress themes save your business money on website design costs, and how WordPress themes help you easily customize your website.
A Revolution In Website Design
More businesses today will benefit from a tremendous revolution in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a small business owner, you may want to know more about this, because it can save your business thousands of dollars on web development or website design costs.
Let’s briefly go over how things worked in “traditional” web design before WordPress was introduced:
First, you would discuss your requirements with a website developer or designer. After that, the actual “web design” itself would be decided upon. This required spending time with a professional web designer discussing things of your web site like the, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be hand-coded with your design elements and scripts coded around your content. All pages were then assembled together 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, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and performed how it should (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the web site deemed to be finished and ready for sign off.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. A web template allows the presentation of the website to be worked on separately from the page content. Having templates helped speed up the process of developing web sites and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also allowed web site designers to work with business clients and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses adopting “template-based” web design services increased, templates started being developed that provided expanding customizable options, such as the ability to switch colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and website editing software developed, website templates also began transforming into website templating “systems” that enabled users and website designers to customize their website’s design components.
And then, WordPress was introduced and helped to start a new content management 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 improve website template systems one step further.
A WP theme controls and unifies every aspect of your website design. It lets you add a “skin” to your site much like a website template system does but it provides you with complete control over the management, appearance and customization aspects of all template features.
As WordPress puts it …
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 in the quote above, a unique and revolutionary feature of the WordPress theme is that how your website looks to site visitors externally is a different thing from the way your content is managed.
In plain English terms, what this means is that themes let you modify the look and feel of your site as often as you want without touching your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if your site has been configured for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. All e-commerce features, site 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 site’s web design is completed. You can get your business website built simply and start with any WordPress theme you like, and edit the entire look, feel and design of your website in mere seconds, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site with no website design knowledge required. Just choose a theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and customize elements like headers, page layout, style settings and more in a few seconds …
Because WordPress is open source software, commercial web designers can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of great WordPress themes are made available to WP users. Themes are usually distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE directory of WordPress themes which allows WordPress users to access thousands of excellent WordPress themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider range of uses.
WordPress themes range from simple-looking, to elegant designs that are simply impressive and would normally cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most premium themes can be purchased quite cheaply, especially when you compare the cost to what it would have cost you if a web designer had to build it from scratch.
You can see a number of theme galleries containing stunning examples of great WP themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using traditional website design:
Ready To Go To Work In Minutes
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WP dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing community of commercial website developers who, collectively, make thousands of high quality WP Themes available to WP users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent design across all the blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This makes it possible to swap WordPress themes as often as you need without deleting your site’s underlying information.
- Many themes come with additional functionality and settings that let you easily customize the site’s style, layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that allows you to update the theme to newer theme versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically inside the site’s administration interface.
- WordPress themes allow WordPress users to save hundreds of dollars on website development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally very inexpensive.
Responsive Theme Design
Many WP theme designers are now developing themes that incorporate “responsive” functionality.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically resize to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and load your site on most if not all device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional browser tools.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website works across all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of web design and web coding.
We hope this overview has helped you gain a better understanding about themes, what themes are, how they can help you save money, and how themes make customizing websites easy.
To learn where to find great themes for your website or blog, click here:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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