The development of powerful website publishing technologies like the WordPress CMS has truly simplified web design and web development for website owners.
This greatly benefits non-technical users planning to start or build a digital presence that they can easily manage.
Prior to blogging and the development of easy-to-use content management systems, if you needed a professional web site, you typically had to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This could mean waiting for many weeks, even many months!
The introduction of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this post, we will explore what WordPress themes are, how themes save you and your business money on web development costs, and how WP themes allow you to easily customize your WP site.
Web Site Design Revolution
More website owners today have been benefiting from a tremendous change in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a small business, you will want to know about this, because it can save you a lot of time and money on web development and web design costs.
In a nutshell, this is how things worked in “traditional” web design before WordPress was developed:
The first step would be to discuss your project with a web site developer or designer. Then, the design itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This meant spending time with someone with web design skills going over design elements of the site such as the layout, colors, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all of the elements and codes scripted into the page content. All the pages were then assembled into a website using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files needed to make your website work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and was performing how it was supposed to (and looking the way the client had wanted it to look), was the web site deemed as being finished and ready for sign off.
The next step in the evolution of business website design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. Website templates allow the ”look and feel” of the website to be worked on separately from the page content. The introduction of ready-made templates helped to make creating websites faster and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed web development companies to service businesses and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses began choosing “template-based” web design services, web templates started being introduced that provided expanding custom options, such as colour palettes, the ability to select different menu styles, formats, header, footer and navigation elements, layouts, etc …
As websites and web editor tools evolved, website templates also started evolving into web templating ”systems”, letting users and web designers control their web site’s visual aspects.
Then, WordPress was introduced and helped to start a new business 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 web templating systems much further.
The WordPress theme system controls and unifies the design elements of the website. It allows you to add a “skin” over your site much like a template system does but also provides users with complete control over the management, presentation and customization of 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 quote states, a unique feature of WordPress is that how your web site appears to visitors on the outside in no way affects the management of your content.
In plain English terms, what this means is that you can change the look and feel of your site as much and as often as you like without affecting your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if WordPress site has been configured for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the 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 have to spend weeks or months waiting for your web design to be done. You can get your website built simply and get started with any WordPress theme you want, and then customize the entire look, feel and design of your site in mere seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site with no web code programming skills required. Simply choose any WordPress theme you want, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like header images, page layout, styling options and more in less than a few minutes …
Because WordPress is open source software, website design companies can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress 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) themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE directory of WP themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of great WordPress themes for free …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Theme Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider range of uses.
Themes range from bare-looking, to artsy designs that are visually stunning and would easily cost many hundreds of dollars to create. Surprisingly, WP themes are really inexpensive.
You can view a number of theme galleries that include many examples of great WordPress themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Using WP Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over choosing web building applications that require traditional website design:
Ready To Start Using In Very Little Time
Themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP admin user section and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing online community of professional web developers who make thousands of professional WP Themes available to WordPress users. Many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all the blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This means you can swap themes as often as you want without changing your blog content.
- Many themes come with additional functionality and options that enable you to easily customize your theme’s layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that allows users to upgrade the theme to a newer theme version without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically inside the site’s administration interface.
- WordPress themes allow users to save hundreds of dollars on website development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically very inexpensive.
About Responsive WP Themes
Many theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically resize to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can scroll, read and load your site on a range of devices without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional browser tools.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website will display correctly on your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards, practices and techniques of web design and web coding.
We hope that this post has given you a better understanding of WordPress themes, what WP themes are, how themes can help your business save money, and how WordPress themes make customizing websites easy.
In the next article on understanding basic WordPress features, we show you where to find the best WordPress themes for your blog.
***
"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
***