Powerful website management platforms like the WordPress CMS have truly improved web design and web development for business owners.
This is great news for business owners thinking about running a website that they can manage by themselves.
Before “blogging” and the development of easy-to-use CMS solutions, if you needed to build a professional website built for your business, you had to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This could mean waiting around for many weeks, even many months!
The development of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this article, you will learn what themes are, how themes help you and your business save money on website development costs, and how themes make it easy to customize your site.
Website Design Revolution
Businesses, especially small businesses, will benefit from an evolution in web design that started several years ago. If you are a small business owner, you will want to learn more about this, because it can save you a lot of time and money on web development and website design costs.
Let’s take a look at what happened before solutions like WordPress came along:
First, you would discuss your requirements with a web development company or web designer. Next, the “web design” itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This involved spending time with someone with web design skills going over elements of the website like the layout, colors, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be individually created with all your design elements and codes scripted into the content. The pages were then assembled together into a web site using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and performed the way it was intended to (and looking the way a client had wanted it to look), was the web site deemed as being finished and ready for sign off.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. A web site template allows the design of the website to be worked on separately from the page content. The introduction of templates helped to make building web sites faster and resulted in lowered production costs. This also allowed website development companies to service small business clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more website development agencies started using “template-based” web design services, web templates started being designed to provide various customization features, like the option to choose different colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and website editing tools evolved, website templates also began to transform into web template “systems” that let website owners and web developers control the visual aspects of their site.
And then, 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:
WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme expands web templating systems further.
A WP theme controls and integrates every aspect of your website design. It lets you add a “skin” over your site in a similar way that a template system does but it provides you with complete control over the management and ability to customize all 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 the above quote states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of the WordPress theme is that how your website displays to site visitors is kept independent of your site’s content management settings.
In simple terms, what this means is that a theme lets you change the appearance of your site as often as you like without modifying your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if WordPress site has been configured 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 unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when your website is powered by WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website design to be done. You can get your website built simply and get started with any theme you like, and then modify the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in seconds, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without having web design knowledge. Simply pick a WP theme you want, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and customize elements like headers, page layout, typography and more in a few seconds …
As WordPress is open source software, web design companies can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of great WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are generally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE directory of WordPress themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent themes for free …
(WordPress.org – Theme Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider range of applications.
WordPress themes range from minimal-looking, to designs that are simply spectacular and could easily cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most premium WP themes can be bought quite cheaply, especially when you compare the cost to what it would have cost you if a web designer had to code it from scratch.
You can view a number of theme galleries containing many examples of great WP themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WP Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing tools that require traditional website design:
Ready To Start Using In No Time
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WP admin account and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large community of professional theme developers who, collectively, contribute thousands of great-looking, high quality WordPress Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all the blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This allows you change themes as often as you need without disturbing the website’s information.
- Many WordPress themes come with additional built-in features and options that allow you to easily customize the site’s style, layout and design properties and create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that enables you to upgrade themes to newer versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically inside the admin panel.
- WordPress themes allow users to save thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally quite affordable.
About Responsive Themes
Many WP theme developers are now creating “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and display the site on most if not all device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to install additional browser elements.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will work correctly across all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards and practices of web design.
Hopefully, this overview has helped you gain a better understanding of themes, what WordPress themes are, how they can help you and your business save money, and how WP themes make customizing web sites easy.
In our next article in the article series on helping you understand features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for great WordPress themes for your blog.
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