The development of flexible website management applications like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) has truly simplified web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This is terrific news for entrepreneurial-minded people that want a digital presence that they can manage.
Before blogging and the development of powerful content management systems, if you wanted a professional web site, you normally had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This could take many weeks, sometimes even many months!
The introduction of WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, we will explore what themes are, how themes save you and your business money on website design costs, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize your WP site.
The Evolution Of Web Design
More website owners have benefited from an evolution in web design that has been going for several years now. If you own a small business, you may want to learn more about this, because it could save your business thousands of dollars on website development and web design costs.
Let’s review what typically took place before a CMS application like WordPress was introduced:
The first step would be to discuss your project with a web site developer or designer. After that, the actual design of your web site itself would be decided upon. This involved spending time with someone with website design skills discussing things of your site such as the, colours, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be hand-coded with the design elements and codes inserted into your page content. All pages were then assembled together into a web site using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and performed how it should (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the website considered as being completed and ready to go live.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. A web site template allows design elements of the web site to be worked on separately from content on the page. Having template elements helped to speed up the process of developing web sites and resulted in lowered production costs. This also enabled web site development firms to service small business clients and clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of web site development agencies adopting “template-based” websites increased, templates were created that could offer a number of customizable settings, such as the ability to switch colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and website editor tools evolved, website templates also began to transform into website templating ”systems”, permitting users to control their website’s visual components.
Then, a “blogging” application called WordPress came along 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:
WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme drives web templating systems much further.
A WP theme controls every aspect of your web site design. It allows you to add a “skin” to your site in a similar way that a template system does but also gives you complete control over the management, appearance and customization of the template options.
As WordPress has stated in its official website …
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 WordPress is that how your web site appears to site visitors is an entirely separate thing from the management of your content.
In plain English terms, what this means is that a theme lets you change the design of your site as often as you like without affecting your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if your site has been set up for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this so great for businesses?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website design to be completed. You can get your business website built simply and start with any WP theme you want, and then edit the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in mere seconds, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site with no website code editing skills required. Just choose a theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your entire site’s web design and customize elements like headers, page layout, styling options and more in a few seconds …
As WordPress is open source software, hundreds of website designers anywhere in the world can design themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that loads of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. WP are generally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great WP themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – WP Theme Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider range of applications.
WP themes vary from functional-looking, to exciting designs that are quite spectacular and would normally cost many hundreds of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most WordPress themes are fairly inexpensive.
You can see several WP theme galleries containing various examples of great premium themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits & Advantages
Here are just some of the benefits of choosing WordPress themes over using traditional web design:
WordPress Theme Installation Is Easy And Quick
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your admin user login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving community of commercial theme designers and design companies who, collectively, contribute thousands of professional WP Themes available to WP users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all your blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This means you can replace the “look and feel” of your templates as often as you need without disturbing the settings.
- Many WP themes provide built-in features and settings that enable you to easily customize the site’s style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables you to update themes to newer versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically from the site’s administration interface.
- Themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on web design costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally very inexpensive.
Responsive Themes
Many WordPress theme developers are now creating “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. laptops, tablets, cell phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and load your site on various device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to install additional browser tools.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website displays well across all of your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards and practices of web design coding.
I hope that the above overview has helped you gain a better understanding of WP themes, what WordPress themes are, how themes can help your business save money, and how WordPress themes make customizing web sites easy.
In the next blog post on understanding basic WordPress features, we show you where to find great themes for your website.
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