Flexible web management tools like WordPress have effectively simplified web design and web development for business owners.
This greatly benefits businesses planning to run a website that they can fully manage themselves.
Prior to blogging and the introduction of user-friendly content management systems, if you needed a web site, you had to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This process could take many weeks, even many months!
WordPress themes changed all this. In this article, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how they save you and your business money on website development costs, and how WP themes let you easily customize your website.
Web Site Design Evolution
More website owners are benefiting from a revolutionary change in web design that started several years ago. If you own a business, you will want to know about this, because it could save your business thousands of dollars on website development or web design costs.
Let’s review how things used to work in “traditional” website development before a CMS application like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a website development agency or website designer for a brief. Then, the actual “web design” had to be discussed and agreed upon. This involved spending time with someone with website design skills going over elements of your site such as the, colors, formats, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all the elements and codes scripted into your page content. All of the pages were then assembled into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files required to make your website work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and performed the way it should (and looking the way the client had wanted it to look), was the site deemed to be finished and ready for delivery.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. Website templates allow ”look and feel” elements of the website to be created separately from the page content. The introduction of templates helped to speed up the website creation process and resulted in lowered production costs. This also enabled website designers to service smaller business clients and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web site development companies started adopting “template-based” web design services, web templates were designed that offered clients with expanding customizable features, like the ability to choose different colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and website editing software evolved, website templates also started evolving into website template “systems” that let users control their site’s visual aspects.
And 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
A WordPress theme takes the idea of a website templating system further.
The WordPress theme system controls and integrates the design areas of a web site. It lets you add a “skin” to your entire site in a similar way that a website template system does but it provides you with more control over the management, appearance and customization aspects of the 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 stated above, a unique feature of the WP theme is that how your site looks to site visitors on the outside is kept independent of your site’s functionality and content management.
In plain English terms, what this means is that a theme lets you change the appearance of your website as much and as often as you want without modifying your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if WordPress site has been configured for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your web site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain unaffected, 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 website built simply and start with any theme you want, and then completely modify the look, feel and design of your website in minutes, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site with no web code development skills necessary. Simply choose any WordPress theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and modify elements like headers, page layout, typography and more in a few seconds …
Because WordPress is open source software, professional website design companies all around the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP template system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes are made available to WP users. Themes are generally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent WP themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Free Theme Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now focused on developing themes for a wider audience of web users.
Themes range from corporate-looking, to designs that are simply impressive and would easily cost thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most themes are really inexpensive to purchase.
You can see a number of WP theme galleries containing many examples of themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional website design:
WordPress Theme Installation Is Easy
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP admin section and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving community of professional website designers and design companies who make thousands of quality WordPress Themes available to WP users. Many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This allows you swap WordPress themes as often as you need without deleting the blog’s underlying data.
- Many WP themes provide built-in functionality and settings that allow you to customize the site’s style, layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that lets users upgrade themes to newer versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically right inside the site’s administration interface.
- WordPress themes lets you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally quite inexpensive.
Responsive WP Theme Design
Many theme designers are now developing “responsive” WP themes.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. laptops, iPads, smart phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different platforms. Users can scroll, read and display the site on different devices without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser elements.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website displays well 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 web coding.
We hope that this article has given you a better understanding of themes, what themes are, how they can help your business save money, and how themes allow you to easily customize your WP site.
To learn where to find great themes for your website, visit this post: How To Find Great Paid And Free Responsive WordPress Web Templates On The Web.
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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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