The development of content management platforms like the WordPress CMS platform has effectively improved web design and web development for web users.
This is a great thing for businesses thinking about building a website that is relatively simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of user-friendly CMS applications, if you needed to build a website built for your business, you typically would have to wait until both the website development and website design processes were completely done. This could mean weeks, sometimes even months of waiting!
The development of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this post, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how themes save your business money on website design costs, and how WP themes help you easily customize your website.
Website Design Evolution
Businesses will benefit from a great change in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a business owner, you will want to learn more about this, because it can save you a lot of time and money on website development and web design costs.
Very briefly, this is what used to happen before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a website developer or website designer for a brief. Then, the “web design” itself would be decided upon. This required spending time and money with someone with web design skills going over things of the web site like the, colors, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your site then had to be individually created with all your design elements and scripts coded into your page content. The pages were then assembled together into a website using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and functioned the way it was intended to (and looking the way a client had imagined it to look), was the website deemed to have been finished and ready to go live.
Then, website “templates” came along”. A website template allows the ”look and feel” of the web site to be worked on separately from content on the page. Having template elements helped to speed up the web site creation process and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed website development agencies to expand their services to include businesses and clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses began using “template-based” websites, templates were created to offer different customizable settings, like colour palettes, the ability to pick different formats or header, footer and navigation elements, and so on.
As web sites and website building applications evolved, website templates also started evolving into website templating “systems” that permit website owners to manage their site’s design aspects.
And then, 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:
About WordPress Themes
WordPress themes improve web template systems even further.
A WordPress theme controls and integrates every aspect of your web site design. It lets you add a “skin” over your site similarly to what a web template system does but it provides you with more control over the management, presentation and customization of all template features.
As the official WordPress site describes 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 the way your site looks to site visitors externally is a completely separate thing from the way your content is managed.
In plain English terms, what this means is that WP themes let you change the appearance of your site as much and as often as you want without affecting your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have configured your website for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be done. You can get your website built quickly and start with any WP theme you like, and then edit the entire look, feel and design of your website in seconds, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WordPress site with no web coding knowledge required. Just pick any WP theme you like, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your website design and modify elements like header images, page layout, styling options and more with just a few mouse clicks …
Since WordPress is made available as open source software, commercial web designers can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP template system.
This means that loads of great WP themes can be downloaded by WP users. Themes are usually distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE directory of WP themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider range of uses.
Themes vary from bare-looking, to designs that are simply beautiful and could typically cost many hundreds of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most premium themes can be purchased quite cheaply, especially when compared to what you would have been charged if a website designer had to develop it from scratch.
You can see several WP theme galleries containing stunning examples of great premium themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Using Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over using applications that require traditional web design:
Installation Is Easy, Quick & Simple
WP themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your WP 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 your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving community of professional theme designers who make thousands of quality WP Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all of the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This means you can replace WordPress themes as often as you like without affecting the blog’s underlying data.
- Many themes provide additional functionality and settings that let you customize your theme’s style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets you update the theme to newer theme versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically within your site’s administration interface.
- WordPress themes helps you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web design costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally quite affordable.
Responsive Themes
Many theme designers are now creating “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. laptops, tablets, cell phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and load the site on all device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional display elements.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website displays well on all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards of website design and coding.
Hopefully, this basic overview has given you a clearer understanding of WP themes, what themes are, how WordPress themes can help you and your business save money, and how themes allow you to easily customize your WP site.
To learn where to find great themes for your blog, click here:
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