The introduction of website management tools like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) has truly simplified web design and web development for business owners.
This is great news for business owners that want a website that is easy to manage.
Prior to blogging and the development of powerful CMS solutions, if you wanted to build a professional site built for your business, you typically had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were completely done. This process could mean weeks, even months of waiting for the work to be done!
WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how WordPress themes save your business money on web development costs, and how themes help you easily customize your WordPress site.
Website Design Revolution
More businesses today are benefiting from a tremendous revolution in website design that has been going for many years now. If you are a small business owner, you may want to learn more about this, because it can save your business a lot of time and money on website development or web design costs.
Very briefly, this is how things worked in “traditional” web development before system like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a web development agency or designer for a brief. After that, the design of the site would be discussed and agreed upon. This involved spending time and money with a professional web site designer discussing design elements of the website such as the, colours, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all of the design elements and codes inserted into the page content. The pages were then assembled into a web site using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file needed to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and worked how it was intended to (and looking the way a client had imagined it to look), was the site deemed as being finished and ready for delivery.
The next step in the evolution of business website design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. Web site templates allow ”look and feel” elements of the web site to be created separately from content on the page. Having template elements helped to make the process of building web sites faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also enabled web site developers and designers to service businesses and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web development companies began using “template-based” websites, templates were developed that offered different customization settings, like the ability to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As websites and website editor applications evolved, website templates also began to evolve into web templating ”systems”, letting website owners and website designers customize their web site’s visual components.
And then, a “blogging” software called WordPress was developed and helped to start 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 expands website templating systems much further.
The WordPress theme system controls and integrates every aspect of your website design. It allows you to add a “skin” to your entire site in a similar way that a web template system does but it also also provides users with more control over the management and customization of all template settings.
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 stated in the quote above, a unique feature of a WP theme is that the way your site displays to visitors externally is a completely different thing from the management of your content.
In simple terms, what this means is that a WP theme lets you change the appearance of your site as much and as often as you want without touching your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have set up 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 intact, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this important?
Because with WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be completed. You can get your business website built simply and start with any WordPress theme you like, and modify the entire look, feel and design of your site in mere seconds, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site without having website code development skills. Simply pick a theme you like, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your entire site’s web design and customize elements like header images, layout, style settings and more in less than a few minutes …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, website design companies can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP templating system.
This means that thousands of great WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. WP are normally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent web templates for free …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider range of users.
WP themes range from simple-looking, to jaw-dropping designs that are quite beautiful and would easily cost many hundreds of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most themes are very inexpensive to buy.
You can see a number of theme galleries that include various examples of great WordPress themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of WP Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing tools that require traditional web design:
WordPress Theme Installation Is Easy
WP themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WordPress site’s admin area.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving community of professional website developers who make thousands of fantastic WordPress Themes available to WordPress users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent design across all of the blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This allows you replace the “look and feel” of your website as often as you need without changing the site’s data.
- Many WordPress themes come with additional built-in functionality and options that enable you to easily customize the theme’s layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that enables you to upgrade the theme to newer versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically within the admin panel.
- Themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on web design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally very inexpensive.
Responsive WP Themes
Many WordPress theme designers are now developing “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically resize to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and display your site on all device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional display elements.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website works across all of your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards of web design and coding.
We hope that this article has given you a good understanding of themes, what themes are, how themes help you save money on web development costs, and how themes make customizing sites easy.
To learn where to search for great themes for your blog, click here:
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