The development of advanced content management tools like WordPress has effectively simplified web design and web development for web users.
This is great for entrepreneurial-minded people planning on getting an online presence that they can manage.
Before blogging and the introduction of easy-to-use CMS solutions, if you wanted a professional website, you typically had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were completely done. This could take weeks, even many months!
The introduction of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this article, you will learn what themes are, how they help your business save money on website design costs, and how themes help you easily customize your website.
The Evolution Of Web Site Design
Businesses are benefiting from a change 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 your business thousands of dollars on web development or web design costs.
Let’s take a look at how things typically worked in “traditional” web design before WordPress were introduced:
First, you would meet with a website development firm or web site designer for a brief. Then, the “web design” itself had to be discussed and agreed upon. This meant spending time and money with someone with web design skills discussing elements of your web site like the layout, colours, formats, graphic elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all of the elements and scripts coded around the page content. All pages were then assembled into a web site using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file required to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and worked how it was intended to (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the site considered to be finished and ready for delivery.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. Web templates allow design elements of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. The development of templates helped to make site creation faster and resulted in lowered production costs. This also allowed website developers and designers to service small business clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of web site development firms adopting “template-based” web design services increased, templates were created that provided clients with a range of customizable features and options, such as color palettes, the ability to specify different page layouts and header, footer and navigation elements, etc …
As websites and website editor software developed, web templates also started to transform into website template ”systems”, enabling website owners to customize the design elements of a website.
Then, WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new website 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
WordPress themes drive the idea of a web templating system one step further.
The WP theme system controls every aspect of your web design. It lets you add a “skin” to your entire site similarly to what a web template system does but also provides users with complete control over the management and customization aspects of template settings.
As explained in 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 above, a unique feature of the WordPress theme is that how your web site displays to visitors is an entirely different system from the management of your content.
In plain English terms, what this means is that WordPress themes let you change the look and feel of your website as often as you like without modifying your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if WP site has been set up for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your website. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your site to be completed. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any WP theme you like, and then modify the entire look, feel and design of your site in a few minutes, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site with no website code development knowledge required. Just pick any theme you want, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your website design and modify elements like header images, page layout, style settings and more in a few seconds …
Because WordPress is open source software, website designers from all over the world can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WordPress themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. WordPress are usually distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE directory of WordPress themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of great website templates for free …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focused on developing themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
Themes vary from minimal-looking, to elegant designs that are simply impressive and would typically cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most premium WordPress themes can be bought quite cheaply, especially when you compare the cost to what you would have had to pay if a website designer had to build it from scratch.
You can see several WP theme galleries containing many examples of great premium WordPress themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits & Advantages Of WordPress Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over using traditional web template design:
Be Up And Running In Very Little Time
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip file that contains the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your WP admin login 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 dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing community of professional website designers who, collectively, make thousands of great-looking, high quality WordPress Themes available to WordPress users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all of the site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This allows you replace themes as often as you like without affecting the website’s information.
- Many themes come with additional built-in functionality and settings that allow you to easily customize your site’s layout, style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables you to update themes to newer versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically inside the dashboard.
- Themes helps you save hundreds of dollars on website development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally very affordable.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many theme developers are now creating WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” design standards.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and display a site on different device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional themes.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your web site will display correctly on all of your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of website design and web coding.
We hope that the above overview has helped you gain a clearer understanding of themes, what themes are, how themes help you and your business save money, and how themes make it easy to customize your WordPress site.
In our next blog post in the article series on understanding basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for great themes for your website or blog.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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