The development of flexible content publishing technologies like the WordPress CMS has effectively improved web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This is a great thing for business owners thinking about building a website that they can easily manage themselves.
Before blogging and the development of powerful CMS applications, if you wanted a professional site, you had to wait until both the website development and web design processes were completely done. This could mean waiting around for weeks, sometimes even months!
The development of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, you will learn what WP themes are, how they can help you save money on web development costs, and how WordPress themes help you easily customize your website.
Evolution In Web Design
More website owners will benefit from a tremendous revolution in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a small business owner, you will want to learn about this, because it can save your business thousands of dollars on web development or website design costs.
Let’s go over what used to happen before system like WordPress was developed:
The first step would be to meet with a web development company or web designer for a brief. Then, the actual ”look and feel” of the website itself would be decided upon. This involved time being spent with someone with web design skills discussing elements of your site like the, colours, styles, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be hand-coded with your elements and scripts coded into the page content. All pages were then assembled 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 website work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and worked the way it should (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the website considered to be finished and ready for delivery.
The next phase in the evolution of web design was the introduction of “web templates”. Website templates allow the design of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. The introduction of templates helped to speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also enabled website development firms to work with smaller businesses and clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses using “template-based” web design services increased, web templates started being introduced that offered clients with different custom features, like the option to switch colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and web editor applications developed, web templates also started evolving into website template ”systems”, letting website owners and website developers customize the visual aspects of a web site.
And then, a “blogging” software called 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:
WordPress Themes
WordPress themes expand the concept of a website template system much further.
A WordPress theme controls and unifies every aspect of your site’s design. It lets you add a “skin” to your site similarly to what a web template system does but also provides you with complete control over the management and customization aspects of all template features.
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 states, a unique and revolutionary feature of WordPress is that the way your site looks to visitors is managed separately from how your website works in the backend to handle areas like content management and functionality.
Basically, what this means is that WP themes let you modify the appearance of your website as often as you like without touching your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have set up your site for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this great news for small businesses?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your web design to be done. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any WP theme you want, and change the entire look, feel and design of your website in mere minutes, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site with no website code development knowledge necessary. Simply pick a theme you want, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and customize elements like headers, layout, style settings and more in a few seconds …
Because WordPress is open source software, hundreds of web designers can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. WP are usually distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of great WordPress themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their content online, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider range of users.
WP themes vary from bare-looking, to designs that are quite breathtaking and would normally cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most WordPress themes are quite inexpensive.
You can view a number of theme galleries that include various examples of WP themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits & Advantages Of Using WP Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits of choosing WordPress themes over using traditional web design:
Easy Installation
WordPress themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large community of commercial web developers and development companies who make thousands of high quality WP Themes available to users. Many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all of your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This allows you swap themes as often as you need without modifying the site data.
- Many themes come with additional built-in functionality and options that enable you to customize the theme’s layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets users upgrade the theme to newer theme versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically directly from within your admin panel.
- Themes allow WordPress users to save hundreds of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically very affordable.
About Responsive Themes
Many WP theme designers are now developing themes that incorporate “responsive” web design.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. laptops, iPads, cell phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can scroll, read and load the site on a range of device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional display elements.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website will work correctly across your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards of website design and coding.
Hopefully, the above overview has helped you gain a better understanding about WP themes, what themes are, how they can help you and your business save money on website development costs, and how themes make customizing web sites easy.
To learn where to search for the best themes for your website or blog, visit this post: How To Find Great Free And Premium WordPress Templates For Your Business Web Site Or Blog.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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