The introduction of content publishing applications like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) has effectively improved web design and web development for business users.
This greatly benefits non-technical users planning to start a digital presence that is relatively easy to manage.
Before “blogging” and the development of powerful CMS software, if you wanted a professional site, you had to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This process could take weeks, sometimes even months!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this post, you will learn what WP themes are, how they save your business money on website development costs, and how WP themes make it easy to customize your WordPress site.
A Revolution In Web Design
More website owners have been benefiting from a tremendous change in website design that has been going for several years now. If you are a small business owner, you will want to know more about this, because it could save your business thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.
Very briefly, here’s how things worked in “traditional” web development before a CMS system like WordPress was developed:
First, you would meet with a website developer or designer for a brief. Then, the actual “web design” itself would be decided upon. This meant time being spent with a professional website designer going over design elements of the web site such as the layout, colors, styles, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site 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 web site using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file required to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and performed how it was supposed to (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the website deemed to have been finished and ready for delivery.
The next phase in the evolution of web design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. A web template allows the ”look and feel” of the web site to be created separately from the page content. The introduction of templates helped to speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in lowered production costs. This also enabled website development firms to expand their services to include businesses and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more website development firms started adopting “template-based” websites, templates started being introduced that could provide expanding customization features, like color palettes, the ability to specify different styles, formats, header, footer and navigation elements, layouts, etc …
As websites and web building software evolved, web templates also started to evolve into web template ”systems”, letting website owners manage the visual elements of a web site.
And then, WordPress came along and helped to start 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
WordPress themes take website templating systems even further.
A WP theme controls and unifies all of the design areas of a web site. It lets you add a “skin” to your entire site in a similar way that a template system does but also provides you with more control over the management, presentation and ability to customize template options.
According to 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 states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of WordPress is that how your site appears to visitors on the outside is managed independently of the way your site works internally to handle areas like content management and functionality.
In plain English terms, what this means is that a theme lets you change the design of your website as often as you want without affecting your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have configured WordPress website 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 unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any WordPress theme you want, and completely edit the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in minutes, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site with no website design skills necessary. Simply choose any WordPress theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like header images, page layout, styling options and more with just a few mouse clicks …
Since WordPress is open source software, web designers can design themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are normally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Free WordPress Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now focused on developing themes for a wider range of users.
Themes vary from simple-looking, to jaw-dropping designs that are visually breathtaking and could typically cost many hundreds of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most premium themes can be bought quite cheaply, especially when compared to what you would have been charged if a web designer had to code it from scratch.
You can see a number of theme galleries that include stunning examples of great premium themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits & Advantages
Here are just some of the benefits of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional website design:
Installation Is Easy
Themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving community of commercial web developers and development companies who contribute thousands of great-looking, high quality WP Themes available to users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent design across all of your blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This makes it possible to replace the “look and feel” of your website as often as you like without modifying the website’s settings.
- Many WP themes come with additional built-in functionality and options that allow you to customize the theme’s style and design properties to create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets you update themes to newer versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically inside your admin panel.
- Themes helps you save thousands of dollars on web design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically quite affordable.
Responsive WordPress Themes
Many WP theme designers are now creating “responsive” WP themes.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and display your site on a range of devices without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to install additional display elements.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website displays well across all 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 and web coding.
I hope the above article has given you a good understanding of themes, what WordPress themes are, how themes help you save money, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize a site.
To learn where to find great themes for your website or blog, go here:
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