The introduction of web site management systems like WordPress has truly improved web design and web development for business owners.
This greatly benefits non-technical users that want to own an online presence that they can manage.
Before blogging and the development of easy-to-use content management systems, if you needed to build a site built for your business, you normally had to wait until both the website development and web design processes were completely done. This could take weeks, sometimes even many months!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this blog post, we will explore what WP themes are, how WordPress themes help you and your business save money on website development costs, and how themes help you easily customize your site.
Web Design Revolution
More businesses today have benefited from a revolution in web design that started many years ago. If you own a small business, you may want to know about this, because it could save your business a lot of time and money on website development and website design costs.
Very briefly, this is what happened before WordPress were introduced:
First, you would discuss your project with a web development firm or designer. Next, the design itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This required spending time with a professional web site designer discussing areas of the web site like the, colours, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be individually created with all your elements and codes written into your page content. All of the pages were then assembled together into a website using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files required to make your website work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and performed how it should (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the website considered to be completed and ready for delivery.
The next phase in the evolution of web design was the introduction of “web templates”. Web templates allow the design of the website to be created separately from the page content. Having template elements helped to speed up the web development process and resulted in reduced production costs. This also enabled web designers to work with businesses and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses started adopting “template-based” web design services, templates started being developed to provide different customizable options, like the option to switch colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and web building applications evolved, web templates also began evolving into web template “systems” that permitted website owners to manage the visual elements of their site.
And then, WordPress was developed 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:
About WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme drives website template systems much further.
The WP theme system controls and integrates all of the design aspects of a web site. It allows you to add a “skin” to your site in a similar way that a template system does but it also also gives you complete control over the management and ability to customize all template features.
As WordPress describes in its 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, one of the unique and revolutionary features of WordPress is that the way your web site looks to visitors is a completely separate system from how your website works internally to handle areas like content management and functionality.
Basically, what this means is that a WP theme lets you change the design of your website as often as you want without touching your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if your site has been set up for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website design to be done. You can get your website built simply and start with any WP theme you want, and then modify the entire look, feel and design of your website in seconds, whenever you choose … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site with no web coding skills necessary. Just choose a theme you want, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like header images, layout, style settings and more in minutes …
Since WordPress is open source software, web designers anywhere in the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of great WP themes are made available to WordPress users. WP are normally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great WP themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – WP Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now focused on developing themes for a wider audience of web users.
Themes vary from bare-looking, to dynamic designs that are simply impressive and would typically cost thousands of dollars to design. Surprisingly, WordPress themes are fairly inexpensive to buy.
You can view several WordPress theme galleries that include stunning examples of themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional web design:
Ready To Use In No Time
WP themes are quite 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 dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing online community of professional website developers and development companies who, collectively, make thousands of great-looking, high quality WP Themes available to WP users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all of your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This allows you replace themes as often as you need without disturbing the site information.
- Many themes provide additional built-in functionality and options that allow you to customize the site’s style, layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows you to update themes to newer theme versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically inside your site’s administration interface.
- WP themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on website development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are typically very inexpensive.
Responsive Themes
Many theme developers are now developing “responsive” WP themes.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different platforms. Users can navigate, read and display your site on all device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser elements.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site displays well on all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards, practices and techniques of web design and coding.
I hope that the above overview has given you a better understanding of WordPress themes, what WordPress themes are, how themes can help you and your business save money, and how WordPress themes allow you to easily customize a web site.
To learn where to search for great themes for your website, see this post: Finding The Best Premium And Free WordPress Themes For Your WordPress Web Site Or Blog.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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