The development of powerful website publishing platforms like the WordPress CMS has truly simplified web design and web development for website owners.
This greatly benefits individuals or businesses thinking of starting a website that is simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Prior to blogging and the introduction of powerful CMS applications, if you needed a business web site, you would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This process could mean weeks, even many months of waiting around!
The introduction of WordPress themes changed all this. In this article, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how themes save you and your business money on website development costs, and how WordPress themes help you easily customize your site.
A New Development In Website Design
Businesses have benefited from a great change in website design that started several years ago. If you are a business owner, you will want to know more about this, because it can save your business a lot of time and money on website development or website design costs.
Let’s go over what normally happened before systems like WordPress came along:
First, you would meet with a web development agency or web site designer for a brief. Then, the actual ”look and feel” of the website had to be decided upon. This involved time being spent with someone with web design skills discussing design elements of your site such as the, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be individually created with all of the design elements and codes written into the page content. All the pages were then assembled 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 website work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and functioned how it was supposed to (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the site deemed to be completed and ready to go live.
The next phase in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. A web template allows presentation elements of the web site to be created separately from content on the page. The development of templates helped to speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed web developers and designers to work with businesses with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses adopting “template-based” web design services increased, templates started being introduced that could provide expanding customizable options, like the option to choose different colors, styles, layouts
As websites and website editor applications developed, web templates also started evolving into website templating ”systems”, enabling users to customize the design elements of their site.
Then, a “blogging” application called WordPress was developed 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:
The WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme takes the idea of a website templating system even further.
A WP theme controls and integrates all of the design areas of a web site. It allows you to add a “skin” over your entire site much like a website template system does but also provides users with complete control over the management and ability to customize your site’s template features.
As WordPress describes 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, one of the unique and revolutionary features of WordPress is that how your site looks to site visitors does not affect your site’s content management settings.
In plain English terms, what this means is that a theme lets you modify the look and feel of your site as often as you want without modifying your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if WordPress website has been set up for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your web site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this important?
Because with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your site’s web design is done. You can get your business website built simply and start with any theme you like, and modify the entire look, feel and design of your website in a few seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without requiring any web code development skills. Simply choose a WordPress theme you want, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like headers, layout, typography and more with just a couple of mouse clicks …
Since WordPress is distributed as open source software, thousands of web designers can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes are made available to WordPress users. WP are normally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent website templates at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Free WP Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
Themes vary from corporate-looking, to designs that are simply breathtaking and would easily cost thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most premium themes are really inexpensive to purchase.
You can see several WP theme galleries containing many examples of themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits & Advantages Of Using Themes
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over using traditional web template design:
Easy Installation
WP themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip folder that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP administrator area and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP theme repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing online community of professional website developers and development companies who, collectively, contribute thousands of great WordPress Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all of your blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This makes it possible to replace themes as often as you like without affecting your site’s underlying information.
- Many themes come with built-in functionality and options that let you customize your site’s style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows you to update themes to newer theme versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically from your admin panel.
- WP themes allow WP users to save thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally very affordable.
Responsive Themes
Many WP theme designers are now creating themes that incorporate “responsive” web design.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. laptops, iPads, cell phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can navigate, read and display your site on a range of devices without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional browser elements.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website displays well 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 coding.
Hopefully, the above overview has helped you gain a better understanding about themes, what themes are, how WordPress themes help you and your business save money, and how WP themes make customizing web sites easy.
In our next blog post on basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to find the best WP themes for your website or blog.
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