The development of website management systems like WordPress has effectively simplified web design and web development for users.
This is a great thing for individuals or businesses planning on getting a website that is easy to manage.
Before blogging and the introduction of user-friendly CMS solutions, if you wanted 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 for the work to be done!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this article, you will learn what themes are, how themes help you and your business save money, and how WP themes make it easy to customize your website.
Web Design Revolution
Website owners have benefited from a revolution in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a small business, you will want to know more about this, because it could save you a lot of time and money on website development and website design costs.
Let’s briefly take a look at how things worked in “traditional” web design before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a website development agency or designer for a brief. After this, the design itself had to be decided upon. This involved spending time with a professional web site designer discussing things of the site such as the, colours, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be individually created with 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, along with every other file needed to make your website work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and worked how it should (and looking how the client had wanted it to look), was the website deemed as being finished and ready to go live.
Then, website “templates” came along”. Web templates allow the presentation of the web site to be created separately from the page content. The development of template elements helped speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed web site development agencies to expand their services to include smaller businesses and clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses began using “template-based” web design services, templates were developed to provide clients with expanding custom features, like colour palettes, the ability to specify different formats or header, footer and navigation elements, etc …
As web sites and web editor tools evolved, web templates also began to transform into web template “systems” that allow website owners to manage their web site’s visual elements.
Then, a “blogging” software called WordPress came along and helped to kick off 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:
WordPress Themes
WordPress themes push the idea of a web template system even further.
The WP theme system controls the design areas of your website. It allows you to add a “skin” over your site similarly to what a template system does but also gives you complete control over the management and customization aspects of all template features.
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 stated in the quote above, one of the unique and revolutionary features of WordPress is that the way your website displays to site visitors is kept independent of how your content is managed.
In plain English terms, what this means is that you can change the appearance of your site as often as you want without affecting your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have set up your site for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the 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 site is powered by WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your site to be completed. You can get your business website built quickly and get started with any WP theme you want, and then change the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in mere minutes, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site with no web code development skills necessary. Simply pick any WP theme you like, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and modify elements like headers, page layout, typography and more in less than a few minutes …
Because WordPress is distributed as open source software, commercial website designers can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of high quality 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) WordPress themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to access thousands of excellent web templates for free …
(WordPress.org – WP Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider range of applications.
WP themes vary from bare-looking, to designs that are simply stunning and could normally cost thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most premium WP themes can be purchased very inexpensively, especially when you compare the cost to what you would have had to pay if a website designer had to develop it from scratch.
You can view several theme galleries containing many examples of great themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of choosing WordPress themes over choosing traditional web template design:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugins folder via your WP admin account and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free WordPress theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing online community of professional theme designers who, collectively, contribute thousands of great WP Themes available to WP users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all of your blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This makes it possible to replace themes as often as you like without changing the website’s content.
- Many themes come with built-in functionality and options that let you customize your theme’s layout and design elements and create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that lets you upgrade themes to newer theme versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically inside the site’s administration interface.
- Themes lets you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically quite inexpensive.
About Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many WP theme developers are now developing WP themes that incorporate “responsive” web design.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. laptops, iPads, cell phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can scroll, read and display your site on a range of device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional themes.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website displays well across all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of website design coding.
Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of WordPress themes, what WP themes are, how themes help you save money, and how themes make it easy to customize your website.
In our next article on helping you understand features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to find great WP themes for your website.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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