The development of advanced web publishing applications like the WordPress CMS has truly improved web design and web development for web users.
This greatly benefits non-technical users planning to start or build a digital presence that is relatively simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Before blogging and the introduction of easy-to-use CMS software, if you needed a professional business site, you had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This could mean weeks, even months of waiting!
WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, we explain what themes are, how they save your business money on web design costs, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize your website.
A New Development In Website Design
More businesses today are benefiting from a tremendous revolution 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 could save your business thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.
In a nutshell, this is how things worked in “traditional” website development before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a website development firm or website designer for a brief. Then, the design itself had to be discussed and agreed upon. This meant spending time and money with someone with web site design skills discussing design elements of your web site like the layout, colours, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be hand-coded 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 all other files 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 the way it was supposed to (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the web site deemed as being completed and ready for sign off.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. Web site templates allow presentation elements of the web site to be created separately from content on the page. The development of template elements helped to speed up the web site creation process and resulted in lowered production costs. This also allowed website developers to service smaller business clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses began choosing “template-based” websites, web templates were created to provide clients with expanding custom features, like the ability to switch colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and website editor applications evolved, website templates also began to transform into web template ”systems”, letting users customize their web site’s design components.
Then, WordPress was developed and helped to kick off 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:
WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme pushes 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 also gives you complete control over the management and customization aspects of your template features.
As WordPress has described in its 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 states, a unique feature of WordPress is that how your website appears to site visitors on the outside does not affect the management of your content.
In plain English terms, what this means is that themes let you change the look and feel of your website 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 WP site has been configured for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your web site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your site to be done. You can get your business website built simply and start with any theme you like, and then change the entire look, feel and design of your site in minutes, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WordPress site with no web coding skills required. Simply choose any theme you want, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your web design and modify elements like headers, page layout, styling options and more in less than a few minutes …
Since WordPress is made available as open source software, web designers can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that thousands of great WP themes are made available to WordPress users. WordPress are generally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE directory of WordPress themes which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of excellent themes for free …
(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 range of users.
WordPress themes vary from functional-looking, to designs that are visually breathtaking and would typically cost many hundreds of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, WP themes are very inexpensive to buy.
You can view several theme galleries that include various examples of great WP themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just some of the many benefits of choosing WordPress themes over using traditional web design:
Be Up And Running In No Time
WordPress themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large online community of professional web designers and design companies who, collectively, make thousands of professional WP Themes available to WordPress users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This allows you replace themes as often as you need without affecting your underlying content of your website.
- Many WordPress themes come with additional features and options that let you easily customize your site’s layout and design elements and create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows you to upgrade themes to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically right inside the admin panel.
- WordPress themes allow users to save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally very inexpensive.
Responsive Theme Design
Many WordPress theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different types of devices. Users can navigate, read and display the site on a range of devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional display elements.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive 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 probably complies with the latest standards of web design.
We hope this overview has given you a better understanding of WordPress themes, what WordPress themes are, how WordPress themes can help your business save money on web development costs, and how WP themes make customizing websites easy.
To learn where to search for great WP themes for your website, see this page: Where To Search For Great Free And Premium Responsive WordPress Templates For Your Web Site Or Blog.
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