WordPress Themes: Things Your Business Might Have Overlooked

UPrinting’s blog network, which includes The UPrinting Blog, and The Art of Small Business among others use WordPress instead of alternatives like Blogger for instance. WordPress themes are now popular with small businesses thanks to their functionality and relative simplicity. Now, anyone needing to build a website and lacking the technical and design know-how can have a site that works.

Veronica Clyde, a tech writer at VPNServices.net explains why you might want to look into WordPress for your own business. – Art

Disclaimer: UPrinting is not affiliated with the author or any of the sites mentioned below. Images and videos found on this page are not owned by UPrinting.com

The WordPress platform started out as something that was almost exclusively intended to make blogging easier. Over the years, it has evolved into a full-fledged content management system (CMS). A CMS allows site owners and administrators to change pages, add or remove content and to change the look of their site without touching any of the source files: PHP files, XHTML files, CSS files and so forth.

Themes figure significantly into the convenience afforded by the WordPress platform. They are available in purpose-built versions and in versions that are designed to provide a general framework for all different types of sites.

What is a Framework?

A framework is a somewhat non-specific term, but it generally refers to the backend features that allow you to control the theme’s look and functionality in an easy way. For example, most WordPress themes have a backend admin panel that allows you to change elements including:

• The color scheme

• The page templates

• The slider features

• The widgetized areas

• The navigation menus

• Most other aspects of the site

There are many different frameworks out there. They include Gantry, WP Framework, Sandbox, Presswork, K9 and many others. These frameworks sometimes work with child themes. This means that you can use the framework to customize the site but that you can also apply a variety of different themes to the framework so that you can make fast and easy changes to the look of the site, even if they’re radical changes.

Advantages

The advantages of WordPress themes are many. One of the principal advantages, however, is the fact that you can change the color schemes, templates and other features of the site without ever touching the source files. The advantages of this arrangement include:

• No risk of introducing errors into the code

• Reduced time required to make changes

Frameworks also usually include quite a few features that make getting your site flushed out much faster. For example, thumbnail resizing plug-ins are very common. These allow you to upload only one copy of every image. The image will automatically be sized and formatted for each area of the site in which it is displayed. This has some obvious advantages, particularly if you’re building a content-rich site such as an eCommerce site or a portfolio site.

Import and Export Convenience

Some frameworks allow you to import and export content to and from different themes. This means that changing the entire theme of your site is sometimes no more complex than selecting a few options. When you’re ready for a fresh look, this can be tremendously advantageous and can help you to avoid downtime.

Some themes are free and some are paid. Most WordPress hosts will have a selection of free themes available for their customers. Because these are included with the hosting package, most of these themes won’t require that you accommodate advertising on your pages or other nuisances. Most of the professional development companies have free themes among their offerings, though paid themes with solid frameworks can reduce the costs of developing a website significantly.

All Photos via photopin

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About the Author

Veronica Clyde is a tech writer at VPNServices.net – a place where you can read reviews about the best VPN providers. If interested check out a Private Internet Access review.