Flexible web site publishing systems like WordPress have truly improved web design and web development for business users.
This greatly benefits non-technical users thinking about getting a website that they can easily manage.
Prior to blogging and the introduction of advanced CMS solutions, if you wanted a business web site, you typically would have to wait until both the web development and website design processes were completely done. This process could mean waiting around for weeks, even many months!
The development of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this blog post, we explain what WordPress themes are, how they help your business save money on website design costs, and how WP themes let you easily customize your site.
Web Site Design Revolution
More website owners today have been benefiting from a great change in website design that started several years ago. If you own a small business, you will want to know more about this, because it could save your business a lot of time and money on website development or website design costs.
In a nutshell, this is what happened before WordPress was introduced:
First, you would meet with a website development company or web site designer for a brief. Then, the “web design” itself had to be decided upon. This meant time being spent with someone with web site design skills going over things of your site such as the, colors, styles, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be individually created with all your elements and codes inserted into your content. All of the pages were then assembled into a web site using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along 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 functioned how it should (and looking the way a client had imagined it to look), was the website considered as being finished and ready for delivery.
The next stage in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “website templates”. Website templates allow ”look and feel” elements of the website to be created separately from the page content. Having templates helped make the process of creating web sites faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also allowed web development firms to work with small businesses and clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses started choosing “template-based” websites, templates started being developed that could provide clients with a number of custom options, such as colour palettes, the ability to pick different layouts or styles, etc …
As websites and website editor applications evolved, website templates also started evolving into website templating “systems” that permit website owners and web developers to customize the visual aspects of a site.
Then, a “blogging” tool called WordPress came along and helped to start 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:
The WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme takes the idea of a web template system even further.
The WP theme system controls every aspect of your website design. It lets you add a “skin” over your entire site much like a website template system does but it also also provides users with more control over the management and ability to customize the template features.
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 states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of WordPress is that how your web site displays to visitors on the outside does not affect how your website is configured in the backend to handle areas like content management and functionality.
Basically, what this means is that you can modify the appearance of your site as much and as often as you like without affecting your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have set up WordPress website for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your web design to be completed. You can get your website built quickly and start with any theme you want, and completely modify the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in a few minutes, whenever you choose … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site with no web code programming skills necessary. Just choose any theme you want, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your web design and customize elements like headers, layout, styling options and more with just a couple of mouse clicks …
Since WordPress is distributed as open source software, website designers can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP template system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are normally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent WP themes for free …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
Themes vary from functional-looking, to artsy designs that are quite stunning and could typically cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, themes can be bought quite inexpensively, especially when compared to what you would have been charged if a web designer had to build it from scratch.
You can see several theme galleries containing various examples of great premium WP themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing web building tools that require traditional web design:
Be Up And Running In No Time
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free WP theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing community of professional theme developers who contribute thousands of great WordPress Themes available to WP users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent design across all your blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This makes it possible to swap themes as often as you like without disturbing the website’s content.
- Many themes provide additional functionality and settings that let you easily customize the site’s style, layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets users update themes to a newer theme version without losing its unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically right within the site’s administration interface.
- WP themes helps you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally quite affordable.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many WP theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes for the WordPress platform.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. computers, tablets, mobile phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different platforms. Users can navigate, read and display a site on most if not all device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional themes.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site works 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 and coding.
I hope this basic overview has given you a better understanding of themes, what WordPress themes are, how WP themes can help you and your business save money, and how WP themes make customizing websites easy.
To learn where to find great themes for your website, visit this page: How To Find Great Paid And Free WordPress Templates For Your Business Online.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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