Powerful website publishing technologies like the WordPress CMS have truly improved web design and web development for business owners.
This greatly benefits non-technical users that want a website that they can manage by themselves.
Before blogging and the development of powerful and simple content management systems, if you needed to build a professional site built for your business, you normally had to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This could mean weeks, even sometimes months of waiting around!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, you will learn what themes are, how they can help you save money on website design costs, and how WP themes make it easy to customize your website.
Web Site Design Evolution
Businesses, especially small businesses, are benefiting from a tremendous change in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a business, you will want to know more about this, because it could save your business a lot of time and money on website development or website design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s what used to happen before WordPress came along:
First, you would meet with a website developer or website designer for a brief. Then, the ”look and feel” of the site would be discussed and agreed upon. This required time and money being spent with someone with web site design skills discussing things of the web site such as the layout, colours, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be individually created with all of the design elements and codes written into your page content. All pages were then assembled together into a website using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file required to make your website work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and functioned the way it should (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the site deemed as being completed and ready for sign off.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. Web templates allow the presentation of the website to be worked on separately from content on the page. The introduction of template elements helped to speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in lowered production costs. This also allowed website developers to service business clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses choosing “template-based” websites increased, web templates started being created that offered clients with expanding custom features, like color palettes, the ability to select different content styles or elements, and so on.
As web sites and website editing software developed, web templates also began to transform into web template “systems” that permitted website owners to customize their website’s visual components.
And then, WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new online 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:
The WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme pushes web templating systems much further.
The WP theme system controls every aspect of your website design. It allows you to add a “skin” over your entire site similarly to what a template system does but it also also provides you with complete control over the management, presentation and customization of the template settings.
As the official WordPress site 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 stated in the quote above, one of the unique and revolutionary features of a WP theme is that the way your website looks to visitors in no way affects the management of your content.
In simple terms, what this means is that you can change the appearance of your site as much and as often as you want without modifying your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if your website has been set up for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this important?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your site to be completed. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any theme you like, and completely customize the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in minutes, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without requiring any website coding knowledge. Just pick a theme you want, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your site’s design and customize elements like header images, layout, typography and more with just a few mouse clicks …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, web design companies anywhere in the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that loads of great WP themes can be downloaded by WP users. WP are normally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE directory of WP themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of great website templates at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Free Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider range of applications.
Themes vary from simple-looking, to exciting designs that are breathtaking and would normally cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most premium themes can be purchased very cheaply, especially when you compare the cost to what you would have had to pay if a web designer had to code it from scratch.
You can view several WP theme galleries that include many examples of great WordPress themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits And Advantages Of Using WordPress Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over choosing website development applications that require traditional web template design:
Ready To Go To Work In Minutes
WP themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your WP admin user login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving online community of commercial theme developers who, collectively, make thousands of great WordPress Themes available to WP users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all of the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This means you can replace themes as often as you want without modifying your underlying content.
- Many themes come with additional functionality and options that let you customize the theme’s layout, style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows you to update the theme to newer theme versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically right inside your admin panel.
- Themes lets you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically very inexpensive.
About Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many theme developers are now creating WP themes that incorporate “responsive” web design.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically resize to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. laptops, tablets, cell phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different types of devices. Users can scroll, read and display the site on different device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser tools.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site works across your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of website design coding.
Hopefully, this article has helped you gain a clearer understanding of themes, what themes are, how themes help you save money on web design costs, and how WP themes make customizing sites easy.
To learn where to search for great WordPress themes for your website or blog, see this page: Finding Great Paid And Free Responsive WordPress Web Themes On The Net.
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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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