Powerful web publishing applications like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have effectively improved web design and web development for web users.
This greatly benefits businesses thinking of starting an online business presence that they can easily manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of user-friendly content management systems, if you wanted to build a website for your business, you had to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This could take many weeks, sometimes even many months!
The development of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this post, we explain what WP themes are, how themes can help your business save money, and how themes let you easily customize your WordPress site.
A Revolution In Web Design
More website owners are benefiting from a tremendous change in web design that has been going for many years now. If you own a small business, you may want to learn about this, because it could save your business a lot of time and money on website development and website design costs.
Let’s briefly review what used to happen before WordPress were developed:
First, you would discuss your requirements with a website development firm or designer. After that, the actual design would be decided upon. This meant time and money being spent with a professional website designer going over things of the web site such as the, colours, formats, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be individually created with all the elements and scripts coded around the page content. All of 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 website work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and functioned how it was intended to (and looking the way the client had imagined it to look), was the site considered as being completed and ready for delivery.
Then, web design “templates” were introduced”. Website templates allow the ”look and feel” of the website to be worked on separately from the page content. The development of template elements helped to make the process of developing websites faster and resulted in reduced production costs. This also enabled web development agencies to work with businesses with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses started choosing “template-based” websites, web templates were developed to provide expanding custom options, such as colour palettes, the ability to select different page layouts or styles, etc …
As websites and web building tools evolved, web templates also started to transform into website templating “systems” that let users and website designers customize the design components of their web site.
And then, a “blogging” application called 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:
The WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme takes the idea of a website template system much further.
The WordPress theme system controls all of the design elements of the web site. It lets you add a “skin” over your site similarly to what a template system does but also provides you with more control over the management, presentation and ability to customize your template settings.
As the official WordPress site explains it …
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 features of the WP theme is that how your website looks to visitors is a completely different thing from the management of your content.
In plain English terms, what this means is that you can modify the appearance of your site as much and as often as you want without modifying your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if your site has been set up for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, 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 need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website design to be completed. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any theme you like, and modify the entire look, feel and design of your site in a few minutes, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site with no web coding knowledge necessary. Just pick any theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and customize elements like headers, layout, styling options and more with just a few mouse clicks …
As WordPress is open source software, web design companies anywhere in the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of great WP themes can be downloaded by WP users. WP are usually distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE directory of WP themes which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of great themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their content online, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
WP themes vary from corporate-looking, to designs that are visually beautiful and would normally cost many hundreds of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most themes can be purchased quite cheaply, especially when compared to what it would have cost you if a website designer had to build it from scratch.
You can view several theme galleries that include various examples of WP themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over using traditional web template design:
Installation Is Easy
WordPress 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 WP themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing community of commercial web developers and development companies who, collectively, contribute thousands of great WP Themes available to WordPress users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all your blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This makes it possible to swap themes as often as you like without deleting your site’s data.
- Many WordPress themes come with additional functionality and settings that allow you to customize the theme’s layout and design elements and create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that enables you to update the theme to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically within your site’s administration interface.
- Themes lets you save thousands of dollars on web design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically quite affordable.
Responsive WP Theme Design
Many WordPress theme developers are now creating “responsive” WordPress themes.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically resize to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and load a site on most device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to install additional themes.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your web site will display correctly across your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards, practices and techniques of web design coding.
We hope this article has helped you gain a clearer understanding of WP themes, what WordPress themes are, how WordPress themes help you and your business save money, and how themes make customizing web sites easy.
To learn where to search for great themes for your website or blog, click here:
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