Powerful website management technologies like WordPress have truly simplified web design and web development for anyone wanting a website.
This is a great thing for entrepreneurial-minded people thinking about starting a digital presence that is easy to manage.
Before blogging and the development of advanced content management systems, if you wanted to get a professional site for your business, you would have to wait until both the web development and website design processes were completely done. This could mean waiting around for weeks, sometimes even months!
The development of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this blog post, we explore what WP themes are, how WordPress themes can help your business save money on website development costs, and how WP themes make it easy to customize your website.
Evolution In Web Design
Website owners have benefited from a tremendous revolution in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a business owner, you may want to learn about this, because it could save you a lot of time and money on web development or website design costs.
Let’s briefly go over what normally happened before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your requirements with a web site developer or web site designer. Then, the “web design” would be discussed and agreed upon. This meant spending time with a professional web site designer discussing elements of your site like the layout, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be individually created with all the design elements and scripts coded into your page content. The pages were then assembled together into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files required to make your website work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and worked how it was supposed to (and looking the way the client had imagined it to look), was the web site considered to be completed and ready to go live.
Then, web design “templates” were introduced”. Website templates allow presentation elements of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. The introduction of template elements helped to make building websites faster and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed web designers to expand their services to include business clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses choosing “template-based” websites increased, templates started being created to provide different customization features and options, such as colour palettes, the ability to specify different menu styles, formats, elements, layouts, etc …
As web sites and website editor tools evolved, website templates also began evolving into web templating ”systems”, permitting website owners and web developers to customize the design aspects of a web site.
And then, a “blogging” tool called WordPress was developed 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:
About WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme drives website template systems even further.
The WP theme system controls and integrates the design aspects of the website. It allows you to add a “skin” to your site much like a template system does but also gives you complete control over the management, presentation and customization aspects of your template options.
As WordPress explains in its web 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, one of the unique and revolutionary features of the WordPress theme is that how your web site looks to site visitors is managed independently of the way your website functions internally to handle areas like content management and functionality.
In plain English terms, what this means is that you can change the appearance of your site as often as you like without touching your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have configured WP website for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when your website is powered with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your website built quickly and start with any WordPress theme you want, and customize the entire look, feel and design of your site in a few minutes, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site with no website coding knowledge required. Just pick any theme you like, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your web design and modify elements like header images, page layout, styling options and more in a few seconds …
Because WordPress is distributed as open source software, web design companies can create themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that loads of great WordPress themes are made available to WordPress users. Themes are normally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great web templates at no cost …
(WordPress.org – WP Themes Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their content online, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
Themes vary from simple-looking, to artsy designs that are visually beautiful and would easily cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, WordPress themes can be purchased fairly cheaply, especially when compared to what you would have been charged if a website designer had to develop it from scratch.
You can see a number of theme galleries that include various examples of great themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits And Advantages Of Using Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over using traditional web template design:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving community of professional web developers and development companies who, collectively, contribute thousands of great-looking, high quality WP Themes available to WordPress users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all your site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This allows you change themes as often as you want without disturbing your underlying content of your web site.
- Many WordPress themes come with additional functionality and options that let you easily customize the site’s style and design elements to create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows you to update the theme to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically directly from within your dashboard.
- WordPress themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on website development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically very affordable.
About Responsive WordPress Themes
Many theme developers are now developing WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” functionality.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each platform. Users can scroll, read and load a site on most if not all devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to install additional browser elements.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site works across all of your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of web design and web coding.
We hope this post has provided you with a better understanding of themes, what themes are, how WordPress themes can help you and your business save money on website design costs, and how themes make customizing your web design easy.
In our next blog post on helping you understand features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to find the best WordPress themes for your website or blog.
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"Learning WordPress has been a huge stumbling block for me. I've been looking for something that covers absolutely everything but doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Thank you so much ... you have just provided me with what I have been looking for! Truly appreciated!" - Tanya
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