Advanced web site management applications like WordPress have truly simplified web design and web development for business users.
This is a great thing for individuals or businesses planning to start a web presence that they can manage by themselves.
Before “blogging” and the introduction of easy-to-use content management systems, if you needed to get a web site built for your business, you normally had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were fully completed. This could mean waiting for weeks, even months!
The introduction of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this blog post, you will learn what themes are, how they help you save money on website design costs, and how WP themes let you easily customize your site.
A New Development In Web Site Design
Businesses, especially small businesses, will benefit from an evolution in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a business owner, you may want to learn about this, because it can save you thousands of dollars on website development and web design costs.
Let’s briefly take a look at how things used to work in “traditional” website development before WordPress were introduced:
The first step would be to meet with a website development firm or designer for a brief. After this, the ”look and feel” of the site itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This meant time being spent with a professional web site designer going over areas of your site such as the layout, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be hand-coded with all your design elements and codes inserted into your page content. All the 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 website work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and performed how it was supposed to (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the site considered to be finished and ready to go live.
The next stage in the evolution of web design was the introduction of “website templates”. A website template allows presentation elements of the web site to be created separately from the page content. Having templates helped speed up the process of developing web sites and resulted in reduced production costs. This also enabled web site development firms to work with businesses and clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses began choosing “template-based” web design services, templates started being introduced to offer expanding customizable options, like colour palettes, the ability to select different formats or page layouts, and so on.
As web sites and web building applications developed, website templates also began transforming into website template ”systems”, letting users customize the design elements of a website.
And 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:
The WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme expands website templating systems further.
A WP theme controls all of the design aspects of the website. It lets you add a “skin” over your site much like a template system does but it also also provides users with more control over the management, presentation and customization of all template options.
According to 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 states, a unique feature of WordPress is that how your website displays to visitors is a separate thing from the management of your content.
In plain English terms, what this means is that a theme lets you change the look and feel of your website as often as you want without modifying your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have set up WordPress site for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your website. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your site to be done. You can get your business website built simply and get started with any WordPress theme you want, and then completely edit the look, feel and design of your site in a few seconds, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without requiring any website code editing skills. Simply choose any theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your website design and modify elements like header images, layout, styling options and more in less than a few minutes …
Since WordPress is open source software, website designers anywhere in the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS 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 freely under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of excellent web templates at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – WP Theme Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider range of uses.
WP themes vary from corporate-looking, to fancy designs that are quite impressive and would normally cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most premium WP themes are quite inexpensive.
You can see several theme galleries containing many examples of themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WP Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using WordPress themes over using applications that require traditional website design:
WordPress Theme Installation Is Easy
Themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your admin area and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress site’s admin area.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large online community of commercial website developers and development companies who contribute thousands of great-looking, high quality WordPress Themes available to WP users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all of the blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This means you can replace the “look and feel” of your website as often as you need without modifying the blog’s underlying content.
- Many themes come with additional built-in functionality and options that allow you to customize the site’s layout, style and design properties to create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that lets you upgrade themes to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from the dashboard.
- WordPress themes allow users to save thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally quite inexpensive.
About Responsive WP Theme Design
Many WordPress theme designers are now developing themes that incorporate “responsive” web design.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically resize to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. laptops, tablets, mobile phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and load the site on a range of device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to install additional display elements.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site displays well on your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards and practices of website design and coding.
I hope that the above article has provided you with a clearer overview of themes, what themes are, how they help your business save money, and how WP themes make it easy to customize your website.
To learn where to search for great themes for your website, see this page: How To Find Great Premium And Free Responsive WordPress Themes For Your Business.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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