The development of website publishing systems like WordPress has truly improved web design and web development for website owners.
This is terrific news for non-technical users wanting a website that they can fully manage.
Before “blogging” and the development of powerful and effective CMS solutions, if you needed to get a site built for your business, you normally had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were completely done. This process could mean weeks, sometimes even many months of waiting!
The development of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this post, you will learn what themes are, how themes save you money on web development costs, and how WordPress themes help you easily customize your site.
Evolution In Web Site Design
Businesses, especially small businesses, will benefit from a revolutionary 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 know about this, because it can save you a lot of time and money on web development or web design costs.
Let’s briefly review how things used to work in “traditional” web design before solution like WordPress came along:
First, you would meet with a website development firm or designer for a brief. After this, the actual “web design” itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This meant time and money being spent with a professional web designer going over things of the web site such as the, colors, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be hand-coded with all of the design elements and scripts coded around your page content. The pages were then assembled together into a web site using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file needed to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and performed how it was supposed to (and looking the way a client had wanted it to look), was the website considered to be completed and ready to go live.
Then, web design “templates” were introduced”. Web site templates allow presentation elements of the website to be created separately from content on the page. The introduction of templates helped make the process of developing web sites faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also allowed web site development companies to expand their services to include business clients and clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses adopting “template-based” websites increased, templates were designed to provide clients with different customizable options, such as color palettes, the ability to pick different styles or styles, etc …
As websites and web editor tools developed, web templates also began to evolve into web templating “systems” that permit website owners and website designers to manage the design elements of their site.
And then, a “blogging” tool called WordPress came along and helped to kick off 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:
The WordPress Theme
WordPress themes improve web templating systems even further.
The WordPress theme system controls and integrates the design elements of your website. It allows you to add a “skin” over your site similarly to what a template system does but it provides you with more control over the management, presentation and ability to customize template options.
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 stated above, a unique feature of the WP theme is that how your site appears to visitors is controlled independently of your site’s functionality and content management.
In simple terms, what this means is that you can change the look and feel of your website as much and as often as you like without affecting your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have configured WP site for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your website. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when your site is built with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your website’s design is done. You can get your website built simply and start with any WP theme you want, and then completely customize the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in mere minutes, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site with no web coding knowledge required. Simply 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 customize elements like header images, page layout, typography and more in minutes …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, thousands of website designers can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of great WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are usually distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent WordPress themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – WP Theme Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their content online, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider range of users.
Themes vary from bare-looking, to designs that are simply beautiful and could normally cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most premium themes can be purchased quite inexpensively, especially when you compare the cost to what you would have been charged if a web designer had to code it from scratch.
You can view several theme galleries that include stunning examples of great themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using website development applications that require traditional web design:
Ready To Use In No Time
Themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing online community of commercial web designers who, collectively, contribute thousands of fantastic WP Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent design across all your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This allows you change WP themes as often as you want without disturbing the website’s data.
- Many WordPress themes provide additional built-in features and options that enable you to easily customize your site’s style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows you to upgrade the theme to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from your admin panel.
- WordPress themes helps you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically quite inexpensive.
About Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many WP theme developers are now creating WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. laptops, tablets, smart phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and load a site on most device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional browser tools.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your web site works across all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards of website design.
I hope that this overview has given you a clearer understanding about WP themes, what WordPress themes are, how themes help your business save money on web design costs, and how WP themes make it easy to customize a web site.
In the next article on understanding basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to find great themes for your website or blog.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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