The development of advanced web site publishing applications like the WordPress CMS has effectively simplified web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This greatly benefits business owners planning to build a web presence that is relatively simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Before “blogging” and the development of powerful and simple CMS tools, if you needed to build a professional web site for your business, you typically had to wait until both the website development and web design processes were fully completed. This could take weeks, sometimes even many months!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, you will learn what themes are, how they save you and your business money on web design costs, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize your site.
A Revolution In Web Site Design
More website owners have been benefiting from an evolution in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a small business owner, you may want to know more about this, because it can save you a lot of time and money on web development or web design costs.
Let’s briefly review what used to happen before WordPress were introduced:
The first step would be to discuss your requirements with a web site development agency or designer. Next, the design of your web site had to be decided upon. This involved spending time and money with someone with website design skills going over elements of your website like the, colours, styles, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be hand-coded with all of your elements and scripts coded into the page content. All the pages were then assembled together into a web site using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your website work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and worked how it should (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the site considered to have been completed and ready for delivery.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. Web templates allow the presentation of the website to be created separately from the page content. The introduction of ready-made templates helped to speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in lowered production costs. This also allowed website designers to service business clients and clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses began choosing “template-based” websites, web templates started being designed to offer various customizable features and options, such as the ability to switch colors, styles, layouts
As websites and web editing tools developed, website templates also began transforming into website template “systems” that let users manage their site’s design elements.
And then, WordPress was developed and helped to start 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 template system much further.
A WP theme controls every aspect of your web design. It lets you add a “skin” over your site similarly to what a template system does but also provides users with complete control over the management, appearance and customization of all template settings.
As per 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 the above states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of WordPress is that the way your website displays to site visitors does not affect how your website functions in the backend to handle areas like content management and functionality.
In simple terms, what this means is that a theme lets you change the look and feel of your site as much and as often as you want without modifying your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if your site has been configured for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when your website is powered by WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your site to be done. You can get your website built simply and get started with any theme you want, and change 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 replace any theme on your WordPress site with no website code editing skills necessary. Simply pick a theme you like, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and customize elements like headers, page layout, style settings and more in less than a few minutes …
Since WordPress is made available as open source software, thousands of website design companies anywhere in the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP template system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are generally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE directory of WP themes which allows WordPress users to access thousands of excellent WP themes for free …
(WordPress.org – Free WP Theme Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their digital presence, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider range of applications.
Themes vary from bare-looking, to dynamic designs that are visually beautiful and could typically cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most WordPress themes are quite inexpensive.
You can view a number of theme galleries containing many examples of themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using WordPress themes over using tools that require traditional web design:
Really Easy To Install
WordPress themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your admin user area and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing online community of commercial theme designers and design companies who, collectively, make thousands of high quality WP Themes available to WordPress users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This means you can change themes as often as you like without changing the site’s underlying content.
- Many WP themes provide additional features and settings that let you customize the theme’s layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that enables you to update themes to newer theme versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically directly from the dashboard.
- Themes helps you save hundreds of dollars on website design costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are typically very inexpensive.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. laptops, tablets, cell phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and display your site on different devices without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional browser elements.
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 on all devices, but 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 and coding.
We hope that this overview has helped you gain a clearer understanding of WP themes, what themes are, how themes can help you and your business save money, and how WP themes let you easily customize a site.
To learn where to search for great WP themes for your website, go here:
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