Powerful web site publishing applications like the WordPress CMS have effectively improved web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This is a great thing for entrepreneurial-minded people thinking of running an online business presence that is simple and easy to manage.
Prior to blogging and the development of powerful and simple content management systems, if you needed to build a professional site for your business, you had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This could mean weeks, even many months of waiting around!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, we look at what themes are, how WP themes can help you save money, and how WordPress themes help you easily customize your website.
Web Design Evolution
More businesses will benefit from a tremendous revolution in website design that started a number of years ago. If you are a business owner, you will want to learn more about this, because it can save your business thousands of dollars on web development or website design costs.
Let’s go over what happened before WordPress were introduced:
The first step would be to discuss your project with a web developer or web site designer. Then, the ”look and feel” of the site would be decided upon. This meant spending time with a professional website designer going over design elements of your site such as the layout, colours, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be hand-coded with the design elements and codes scripted into the page content. The pages were then assembled into a web site using links 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 had been tested and performed how it was intended to (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the website considered to have been finished and ready to go live.
The next step in the evolution of web design was the introduction of “web templating elements”. A website template allows presentation elements of the website to be worked on separately from content on the page. Having template elements helped to make the process of website development faster and resulted in reduced production costs. This also enabled website designers to expand their services to include smaller businesses with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web site development agencies started adopting “template-based” web design services, web templates were created that offered a range of customizable features, such as color palettes, the ability to select different menu styles, formats, header, footer and navigation elements, page layouts, etc …
As websites and web editing tools developed, website templates also began transforming into web templating ”systems”, which permitted website owners and web developers to control the design components of a web site.
Then, WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new content management 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 expand website template systems one step further.
A WordPress theme controls and unifies every aspect of your web design. It allows you to add a “skin” to your site similarly to what a web template system does but it gives you complete control over the management, appearance and ability to customize the template options.
As stated in 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 quote states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of WordPress is that how your site appears to site visitors externally is managed separately from the management of your content.
In plain English terms, what this means is that you can change the design of your site as often as you want without affecting your site’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 your web site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, 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 site to be completed. You can get your business website built simply and get started with any WordPress theme you want, and then completely modify the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WP site with no web coding skills necessary. Just pick any WordPress theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your site’s design and modify elements like headers, layout, style settings and more in less than a few minutes …
Since WordPress is made available as open source software, web designers from all over the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of great WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are generally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of great themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – WP Themes Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now focused on developing themes for a wider audience of web users.
WordPress themes range from simple-looking, to designs that are simply beautiful and could typically cost thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most premium WordPress themes are fairly inexpensive.
You can see a number of WP theme galleries that include various examples of WP themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of WordPress Themes
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over using traditional web design:
Easy To Install
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme directory at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing online community of professional website designers who, collectively, make thousands of high quality WP Themes available to users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent look across all the blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This makes it possible to replace themes as often as you need without modifying the site data.
- Many WordPress themes provide additional built-in functionality and options that let you easily customize the site’s layout, style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that enables users to upgrade the theme to newer versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically inside the admin panel.
- WordPress themes helps you save hundreds of dollars on website design costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically quite inexpensive.
Responsive Themes
Many theme developers are now creating WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different platforms. Users can scroll, read and display your site on a range of devices without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to install additional browser tools.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will work correctly across all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards and practices of website design coding.
I hope the above article has given you a clearer overview of themes, what themes are, how WP themes help you save money on website development costs, and how themes make customizing your web design easy.
To learn where to find the best themes for your website or blog, go here:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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