The development of advanced website management tools like WordPress has effectively improved web design and web development for business users.
This is a great thing for business owners thinking of starting a website that is relatively easy to manage.
Before blogging and the introduction of advanced content management systems, if you needed a professional business website, you normally would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This process could mean waiting around for weeks, even many months!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, we explore what themes are, how themes save your business money on website design costs, and how themes make it easy to customize your website.
Evolution In Web Site Design
Website owners are benefiting from a tremendous change in web design that started many years ago. If you own a small business, you may want to learn about this, because it can save you thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s what used to happen before tool like WordPress was introduced:
First, you would meet with a website developer or web site designer for a brief. After that, the “web design” itself had to be decided upon. This involved spending time with a professional web site designer going over design elements of the web site like the, colors, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be hand-coded with all of your elements and scripts coded into the content. All pages were then assembled into a web site using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and performed how it was supposed to (and looking the way the client had wanted it to look), was the web site considered to have been finished and ready for sign off.
The next step in the evolution of business website design was the introduction of “website templates”. A web site template allows presentation elements of the web site to be created separately from the page content. Having ready-made templates helped to speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed web designers to work with business clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses began using “template-based” web design services, templates started being developed that could provide different customization features and options, such as color palettes, the ability to select different styles, formats, header, footer and navigation elements, layouts, and so on.
As websites and web editor applications developed, website templates also began evolving into web templating “systems” that let users customize the design aspects of a site.
Then, a “blogging” tool called WordPress was developed and helped to start a new web 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
WordPress themes improve website template systems much further.
The WordPress theme system controls and unifies every aspect of your site’s design. It lets you add a “skin” over your site similarly to what a website template system does but it gives you more control over the management, presentation and customization aspects of template settings.
As the official WordPress site explains …
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 features of WordPress is that the way your web site displays to visitors on the outside is controlled separately from the way your content is managed.
In simple terms, what this means is that you can change the look and feel of your site as often as you want without modifying your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if your site has been configured 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 intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any theme you want, and then customize 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 replace any theme on your WP site without the need of website code editing skills. Simply choose a theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your web design and modify elements like header images, layout, styling options and more in minutes …
Because WordPress is open source software, web design companies can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes are made available to WordPress users. Themes are normally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to access thousands of great WP themes for free …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now focused on developing themes for a wider range of users.
Themes range from corporate-looking, to designs that are quite impressive and would normally cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most themes can be bought quite inexpensively, especially when you compare the cost to what it would have cost you if a web designer had to develop it from scratch.
You can see several theme galleries containing various examples of WordPress themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of WP Themes
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over using tools that require traditional web design:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
WP themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving community of commercial theme developers and development companies who, collectively, contribute thousands of quality WP Themes available to WP users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all the blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This makes it possible to replace the “look and feel” of your website as often as you need without disturbing your content.
- Many WordPress themes provide built-in features and settings that allow you to customize the site’s layout, style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that allows you to update themes to newer versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically within the site’s administration interface.
- Themes helps you save hundreds of dollars on website design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are typically quite inexpensive.
Responsive Themes
Many WP theme designers are now creating “responsive” WP themes.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and load the site on most if not all devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional browser tools.
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 web site will work correctly on all of your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards and practices of website design coding.
Hopefully, this post has given you a clearer understanding of WP themes, what themes are, how WordPress themes help you save money, and how themes make it easy to customize your website.
In our next article on basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for great themes for your blog.
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