Flexible website publishing technologies like the WordPress CMS have truly simplified web design and web development for website owners.
This is great news for non-technical users planning to start a website that they can fully manage themselves.
Before “blogging” and the introduction of powerful and simple content management systems, if you needed to get a professional web site for your business, you normally had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were completely done. This could take many weeks, even months!
The introduction of WordPress themes changed all this. In this article, we take a look at what WordPress themes are, how they save your business money on website development costs, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize your site.
Website Design Revolution
Website owners are benefiting from a great change in web design that has been going for a number of years now. If you own a business, you will want to know about this, because it can save you thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.
Very briefly, here’s what normally took place before a CMS application like WordPress came along:
First, you would discuss your requirements with a website developer or designer. After that, the design would be decided upon. This meant spending time and money with someone with website design skills going over elements of the site like the layout, colors, styles, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be hand-coded with your elements and codes inserted into your content. The pages were then assembled into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and functioned the way it was supposed to (and looking the way a client had imagined it to look), was the site considered to be finished and ready for delivery.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. A website template allows the ”look and feel” of the website to be worked on separately from content on the page. Having templates helped to speed up the web site creation process and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also allowed website development firms to service smaller business clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of web development firms choosing “template-based” websites increased, web templates started being developed that provided various customization settings, such as the ability to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As websites and web editor applications evolved, website templates also began evolving into web template “systems” that enable website owners to customize the visual components of their website.
Then, WordPress came along and helped to start a new business website 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 drive website template systems even further.
The WP theme system controls and integrates every aspect of your web design. It lets you add a “skin” over your entire site much like a template system does but also gives you more control over the management, appearance and customization aspects of your template options.
As the official WordPress site states …
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, a unique and revolutionary feature of WordPress is that the way your web site looks to visitors is managed independently of how your site functions in the backend to handle areas like content management and functionality.
In plain English terms, what this means is that a theme lets you modify the appearance of your site as often as you like without modifying your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have configured WordPress site for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your website. All e-commerce features, site and plugin 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 spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be completed. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any WordPress theme you want, and then modify the entire look, feel and design of your website in seconds, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without the need of website coding knowledge. Simply choose a theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and modify elements like headers, page layout, typography and more with just a few mouse clicks …
Because WordPress is open source software, professional web design companies all around the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP template system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes are made available to WP users. WordPress are normally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE directory of WordPress themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider audience of web users.
Themes vary from functional-looking, to creative designs that are spectacular and would easily cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most premium themes are really inexpensive to buy.
You can see a number of theme galleries that include various examples of great premium WP themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of WP Themes
Here are just some of the benefits of using WordPress themes over choosing website building tools that require traditional web design:
Quick Installation
WordPress themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free WP theme directory at WordPress.org) directly inside your WordPress site’s admin area.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing online community of commercial web designers and design companies who contribute thousands of high quality WordPress Themes available to WordPress users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent look across all of your blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This means you can change themes as often as you want without changing the settings.
- Many themes provide additional functionality and options that enable you to customize the site’s style and design elements to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that lets users 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 directly from within your site’s administration interface.
- Themes allow WordPress users to save thousands of dollars on web design costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically very inexpensive.
Responsive Theme Design
Many theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically resize to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different types of devices. Users can navigate, read and load your site on various device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to install additional browser tools.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site displays well on your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards, practices and techniques of website design.
I hope that this article has provided you with a better understanding of WP themes, what WordPress themes are, how themes can help you save money on web design costs, and how WP themes make it easy to customize a site.
In the next article on helping you understand WP features, we show you where to search for great WordPress themes for your website or blog.
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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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