Powerful web management applications like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have effectively simplified web design and web development for anyone wanting a website.
This greatly benefits non-technical users wanting to start a website that is relatively easy to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of user-friendly CMS software, if you wanted to get a site built for your business, you normally had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were fully completed. This process could mean weeks, even sometimes many months of waiting for the work to be done!
WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, we explain what themes are, how they save you money on web development costs, and how WP themes help you easily customize your website.
Revolutionary Website Design
Website owners have been benefiting from a change in website design that has been going for a number of years now. If you are a small business owner, you may want to learn more about this, because it can save you a lot of time and money on web development and web design costs.
Let’s take a look at what happened before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a website developer or designer for a brief. Next, the design itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This required time and money being spent with someone with web site design skills going over design elements of the web site like the, colors, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Every page of your site then had to be hand-coded with all the elements and codes inserted into your page content. All pages were then assembled into a web site using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and performed how it should (and looking the way the client had imagined it to look), was the website deemed to be completed and ready for sign off.
The next phase in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. Website templates allow the ”look and feel” of the web site to be created separately from the page content. The development of templates helped to make developing web sites faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also enabled web designers to expand their services to include small businesses and clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses started adopting “template-based” websites, templates were created that could provide clients with different customization settings, such as color palettes, the ability to select different formats and layouts, and so on.
As websites and web editing applications evolved, website templates also started transforming into website template ”systems”, enabling users to customize their site’s design aspects.
Then, WordPress was developed and helped to start a new web revolution …
(WordPress – A Content Publishing Revolution)
To learn more about content management systems and the benefits of the WordPress CMS, see the tutorial below:
About WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme expands website templating systems much further.
A WP theme controls all of the design aspects of the website. It lets you add a “skin” over your site in a similar way that a website template system does but it also also provides users with complete control over the management and customization of all template options.
As WordPress has described in its website …
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 quote states, one of the unique features of WordPress is that the way your site looks to site visitors externally in no way affects the way your content is managed.
In simple terms, what this means is that WP themes let you modify the appearance of your site as much and as often as you want without touching 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, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. All e-commerce features, site 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 have to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your business website built simply and get started with any theme you want, and completely customize the look, feel and design of your site in seconds, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without requiring web coding knowledge. Just pick a WordPress theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and customize elements like headers, page layout, typography and more with just a couple of mouse clicks …
Because WordPress is distributed as open source software, website designers from all over the world 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 WP users. WP are normally distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to access thousands of great themes for free …
(WordPress.org – Theme Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider audience of web users.
WordPress themes vary from bare-looking, to designs that are quite beautiful and would typically cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most WP themes are really inexpensive.
You can view several theme galleries that include many examples of great premium themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over using traditional web design:
Ready To Use In No Time
WP themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugins folder via your admin user area and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large community of commercial website designers who make thousands of great-looking, high quality WP Themes available to WP users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all of the blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This makes it possible to replace themes as often as you like without affecting the site’s underlying information.
- Many themes provide built-in functionality and settings that let you customize the theme’s layout, style and design properties to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that allows users to upgrade themes to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically inside the dashboard.
- WP themes helps you save hundreds of dollars on website design costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally quite affordable.
Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many WordPress theme developers are now creating WP themes that incorporate “responsive” functionality.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. laptops, tablets, mobile phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can scroll, read and load the site on a range of device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to have installed additional browser tools.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your web site works on all of your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards, practices and techniques of web design and coding.
We hope this overview has given you a better understanding about WP themes, what themes are, how they can help your business save money, and how themes let you easily customize your WordPress site.
In the next article in the article series for new WordPress users on basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for the best WordPress themes for your website or blog.
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