Powerful web publishing systems like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have effectively simplified web design and web development for business users.
This is great news for non-technical users thinking of starting a digital presence that is relatively simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Before “blogging” and the development of advanced content management systems, if you needed to get a site for your business, you normally would have to wait until both the website development and website design processes were fully completed. This process could take weeks, even months!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this blog post, we explain what WP themes are, how WP themes help you save money on website development costs, and how WordPress themes let you easily customize your website.
Website Design Evolution
More businesses will benefit from a tremendous change in web design that started a number of years ago. If you own a small business, you may want to learn about this, because it can save your business thousands of dollars on website development or web design costs.
Let’s take a look at what used to happen before WordPress was introduced:
The first step would be to discuss your project with a web development firm or designer. Next, the actual “web design” would be decided upon. This required time and money being spent with a professional web site designer discussing design elements of your web site like the, colours, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be individually created with all of your design elements and scripts coded into your page content. All pages were then assembled together into a website using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and worked how it should (and looking the way a client had imagined it to look), was the website considered to have been completed and ready to go live.
The next stage in the evolution of web design was the introduction of “website templates”. Web templates allow the presentation of the website to be created separately from the page content. The introduction of templates helped to make building web sites faster and resulted in lowered production costs. This also allowed web development firms to work with businesses and clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of web site development firms using “template-based” web design services increased, templates started being introduced to provide clients with expanding custom features, like colour palettes, the ability to pick different content styles, formats, elements, page layouts, etc …
As web sites and website editor tools evolved, web templates also started to transform into website template ”systems”, letting website owners customize their website’s design elements.
Then, a “blogging” application called WordPress was developed 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 take web template systems much further.
The WP theme system controls and unifies every aspect of your web design. It lets you add a “skin” to your site much like a template system does but also provides you with more control over the management, presentation and customization aspects of your template features.
As WordPress puts 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, a unique and revolutionary feature of WordPress is that the way your website displays to site visitors is a completely different system from your site’s functionality and content management.
In simple terms, what this means is that you can modify the look and feel of your site as much and as often as you want without touching your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have configured your website for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be completed. You can get your business website built simply and start with any theme you want, and then modify the entire look, feel and design of your site in mere seconds, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site with no web code development skills necessary. Simply pick a theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your web design and customize elements like headers, page layout, typography and more in less than a few minutes …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, professional website designers anywhere in the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that thousands of great WP themes are made available to WP users. WordPress are usually distributed freely under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to access thousands of excellent website templates at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Free WP Theme Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider audience of web users.
Themes vary from functional-looking, to fancy designs that are quite breathtaking and would normally cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, WordPress themes are very inexpensive.
You can see a number of theme galleries that include many examples of great premium themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over using web building tools that require traditional web template design:
Fast Installation
Themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large community of commercial website designers and design companies who, collectively, contribute thousands of high quality WP Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all of the blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This allows you replace the “look and feel” of your website as often as you want without deleting the settings.
- Many themes come with additional built-in features and options that allow you to customize the site’s layout and design elements and create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that lets you update the theme to newer theme versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically directly from the dashboard.
- Themes allow WordPress users to save thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are typically very affordable.
Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many theme designers are now creating WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” design standards.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. PCs, tablets, mobile phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and load a site on most devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional themes.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site displays well across all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards, practices and techniques of website design and web coding.
I hope that this overview has given you a better understanding of themes, what themes are, how they can help your business save money on website design costs, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize a site.
In our next article on understanding basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for the best themes for your blog.
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