The introduction of website publishing platforms like the WordPress CMS has effectively simplified web design and web development for website owners.
This greatly benefits individuals or businesses thinking of starting an online presence that is relatively simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Before “blogging” and the development of advanced content management systems, if you wanted a web site, you typically would have to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This could mean waiting for many weeks, even months!
The development of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this post, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how themes save your business money on website development costs, and how WP themes let you easily customize your WordPress site.
Web Site Design Evolution
More website owners are benefiting from a change in web design that started many years ago. If you own a small business, you may want to learn more about this, because it could save you a lot of time and money on web development and web design costs.
Let’s review how things used to work in “traditional” web development before CMS software like WordPress were developed:
First, you would meet with a web developer or designer for a brief. After this, the actual “web design” itself had to be discussed and agreed upon. This involved spending time and money with someone with web site design skills going over things of your site such as the layout, colours, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be individually created with all of your elements and scripts coded around the page content. The pages were then assembled into a web site using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your website work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and performed the way it was intended to (and looking the way the client had imagined it to look), was the site deemed to be finished and ready for sign off.
Then, website “templates” were developed”. A web template allows the design of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. The development of ready-made templates helped make the process of building web sites faster and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed web developers to expand their services to include small business clients and clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses adopting “template-based” websites increased, web templates started being designed that could offer a range of custom features and options, such as the option to switch colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and web building tools evolved, website templates also began evolving into web template ”systems”, which enabled users and website designers to manage their site’s visual components.
Then, a “blogging” software called WordPress was developed and helped to start 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
WordPress themes expand website templating systems one step further.
A WP theme controls every aspect of your website design. It lets you add a “skin” over your site much like a website template system does but also provides you with complete control over the management and ability to customize template settings.
As WordPress 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 the above quote states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of a WordPress theme is that the way your site displays to site visitors in no way affects your site’s content management settings.
In simple terms, what this means is that a theme lets you change the look and feel of your website as much and as often as you like without touching your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have set up WP site for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your 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 website built simply and start with any theme you like, and then modify the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in minutes, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site with no website coding knowledge necessary. Just choose a WP theme you like, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and modify elements like header images, layout, style settings and more in less than a few minutes …
Since WordPress is open source software, web design companies all around the world can design themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP template system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes are made available to WordPress users. WP are generally distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WP themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE directory of WP themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of great WP themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
Themes range from professional-looking, to fancy designs that are beautiful and could normally cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to design. Surprisingly, themes are really inexpensive to buy.
You can view several theme galleries containing stunning examples of great premium themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Using WordPress Themes
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over using traditional web template design:
Very Easy To Install
WP themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your admin user login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress themes directory at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing community of commercial theme developers who, collectively, contribute thousands of professional WordPress Themes available to WordPress users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all of the blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This means you can swap themes as often as you like without modifying your blog data.
- Many WordPress themes provide additional built-in features and settings that let you customize your theme’s layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that allows you to update themes to a newer theme version without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically within your dashboard.
- WP themes lets you save thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally quite affordable.
About Responsive Themes
Many WordPress theme designers are now developing “responsive” themes for the WP CMS platform.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and display the site on different device platforms without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional themes.
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 will display correctly on all 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 web design.
I hope that the above overview has given you a clearer understanding of themes, what WordPress themes are, how themes help you save money on website development costs, and how themes make customizing websites easy.
To learn where to search for great WP themes for your blog, go here:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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