Flexible web management applications like WordPress have truly simplified web design and web development for non-technical website owners.
This greatly benefits entrepreneurial-minded people planning on getting a website that is relatively simple and easy to manage.
Before blogging and the introduction of user-friendly CMS technologies, if you needed to build a professional web site for your business, you typically had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were fully completed. This process could take many weeks, even months!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this blog post, you will learn what WP themes are, how WordPress themes can help you and your business save money on web design costs, and how themes help you easily customize your WordPress site.
Web Site Design Evolution
More website owners today will benefit from a tremendous revolution in web design that has been going for several years now. If you own a business, you will want to learn more about this, because it could save you a lot of time and money on website development or web design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s how things used to work in “traditional” web development before WordPress were introduced:
The first step would be to discuss your requirements with a web site development firm or designer. After this, the “web design” itself would be decided upon. This involved spending time with a professional web site designer discussing design elements of your web site such as the layout, colours, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be hand-coded with all of the elements and scripts coded into your page 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, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and worked how it was intended to (and looking how the client had wanted it to look), was the web site deemed to be completed and ready for delivery.
Then, website “templates” came along”. Website templates allow presentation elements of the web site to be created separately from content on the page. The introduction of template elements helped make the process of website creation faster and resulted in lowered production costs. This also enabled web site development firms to expand their services to include small businesses and clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of web development firms adopting “template-based” websites increased, templates were created to offer clients with different customization features, such as colour palettes, the ability to pick different formats or header, footer and navigation elements, etc …
As websites and web editing applications evolved, web templates also began evolving into website templating ”systems”, allowing website owners and web developers to control the design components of their site.
And then, a “blogging” software called WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new web 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
WordPress themes improve website template systems one step further.
A WordPress theme controls all of the design areas of a website. It allows you to add a “skin” to your site in a similar way that a template system does but it also also gives you more control over the management, appearance and customization aspects of your site’s template options.
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 stated above, a unique feature of the WP theme is that how your site looks to visitors externally does not affect the way your content is managed.
Basically, what this means is that you can change the design of your site as often as you want without affecting your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have set up WP website 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 huge! Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your site to be completed. You can get your website built simply and start with any theme you like, and then modify the entire look, feel and design of your site in mere minutes, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site without requiring any web design skills. Simply pick any WordPress theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like header images, page layout, styling options and more in less than a few minutes …
Since WordPress is made available as open source software, website designers from all over the world can design themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that thousands of great WordPress themes are made available to WP users. WP are generally distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) WP themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE directory of WP themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent web templates at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider audience of WordPress site owners.
Themes vary from professional-looking, to designs that are spectacular and could typically cost thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most themes are very inexpensive to buy.
You can view several theme galleries that include various examples of WordPress themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits & Advantages
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional website design:
Installation Is Easy
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP themes repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing community of professional website developers and development companies who, collectively, contribute thousands of professional WordPress Themes available to WP users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent look across all of the blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This means you can swap the “look and feel” of your web site as often as you need without disturbing the site data.
- Many themes provide additional functionality and options that allow you to easily customize your theme’s layout, style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that lets you update the theme to a newer theme version without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically inside your admin panel.
- WP themes allow WordPress users to save hundreds of dollars on website design costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically very inexpensive.
Responsive Theme Design
Many WordPress theme developers are now creating themes that incorporate “responsive” web design.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. PCs, tablets, mobile phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can scroll, read and load your site on most device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser elements.
Note: When searching for 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 across your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards, practices and techniques of web design and coding.
We hope that this article has given you a good overview of WordPress themes, what WP themes are, how themes help you and your business save money, and how themes make it easy to customize your web site.
In the next blog post in the article series for non-technical users on helping you understand WordPress features, we show you where to find great WP themes for your blog.
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