Long ago in the blog world, blogs were limited in their style to a simple format – a header, footer and pages upon pages of blog posts. But with the release of new versions of WordPress there also came a new feature to customize your blog with different “skins” called Themes. These themes were custom designed to work behind the scenes of your WordPress blog to control the display of your site with style, color and flair.

Over the years, Themes have become more robust and now offer so many new and unique features that sites built using WordPress now have the ability to look and feel like a “real” website and site owners are staring to embrace the usability of WordPress to control their entire online business.

With the new trend emerging to use WordPress to create a business website, there is still a lot of confusion as to what a Theme is, how it works and what using WordPress can offer you. Here’s a brief rundown of what Themes are and how a WordPress site can work for you.

Your WordPress Site vs. Your Theme

In the past, a business owner might have a blog and a static website that were separate from each other. The downside of that is two-fold. For one, your content is separated for visitors to search out on multiple sites. For two, you lose out on the SEO benefits of the ever-changing, content-rich blog posts for your main website. Combining the two makes it easy for your visitors to find what they need in one place AND boosts your SEO by having a lot of content for the search engines to crawl.

Many people have come to me worried that all the work and time they have put into their blog will be lost if they switch to a new theme that will display their site as more of a website then a blog. That is not the case, since the site content and the theme are two separate entities (for the most part). Think of it this way – Your WordPress site is like your dinner. Your content (posts, pages, images, etc…) is the meat and potatoes of your site. Your theme is like the plate you serve it on. You can move your meat and potatoes to a different plate and you won’t loose any of the food – just change the way your dinner is displayed. In WordPress, you can change the theme as much as you want, and your content will still remain the same – albeit displayed differently.

Some Themes require custom coding to set up the end result – like uploading images for your header, background and footer, or adding pages to your navigation. This is where a web designer would step in. Rather then building a static (standard) website from scratch, a designer can take a pre-built Theme and customize it to look and feel like a static website that showcases your businesses brand. Depending on your needs, some Themes will look perfect straight out of the box while other will need tweaking to look and feel the right way. When a designer customizes a Theme, many times you as a visitor can not even tell the site is a WordPress site. But, then, what’s the point?

The Point of Using WordPress.

Here’s one of the biggest reasons for the trend: usability. I can’t tell you the number of times I have had a new client come to me, exasperated because they spent XXX dollars on a beautiful, custom static site only to find out that they either could not update their site at all, could not find the original designer to help them update the site, or were charged insane fees by the designer to make updates. With the fast paced world of internet marketing, you have to be able to update your site with new, fresh content to keep your visitors coming back. Introduce WordPress – a content management system that allows anyone with a little bit of computer knowledge (i.e. using Microsoft Word) to control their website, update pages and post new, fresh articles and resources to their own site without needed a web designer. Yay! With a little bit of practice and some training, anyone can operate a robust website with ease. (That’s not to say that some changes and edits may need the help of a web designer – but for the most part – you have control!!)

Choosing a Theme.

There are thousands of Theme options out there – in my experience, the style of a Theme is not as important as the way the Theme is built – clear, uncluttered coding makes a world of difference and a well built Theme offers more then just style. SEO is important (ok, REALLY important) and a well built Theme will keep in line with industry standards for SEO, making it easy for you to increase your traffic. Another benefit of a well-built Theme is the ease of customization – even someone with very little coding knowledge can make sense out of the custom coding and tweak things to make their website perfect for them. Take caution when choosing a theme that just looks good – you may find that in the backend, its pure chaos.

When searching for a Theme, some of the key things to look at are header/footer size & style, navigation menu style and home page style. Some Themes do not offer much in the way of customizing the header and navigation menu – some offer unlimited options. Home page style is also a big determining factor since your home page is the first thing your visitor will see. When looking at Themes check out their demo home page. Many will limit your home page to either feature blog posts or a static page (like Thesis), while others will have “modules” that display multiple sections of information, combining blog posts, static content and other media (like the StudioPress Themes).

Many other factors play a roll in Theme choice – like the type of content you will have (heavy on static content or blog posts, media heavy or graphics heavy). It’s best to decide prior to your Theme search what the most important information is on your site and what types of things you want to feature. Tell your web designer what your priorities are and they can help you find a Theme to build onto that will work best for you. Themes to me are a lot like a puzzle – the Theme developer has provided the puzzle pieces and your web designer can put those together to create the perfect end-result for your needs.

Using WordPress Like a Website.

Using a robust Theme, you can position your WordPress website to work like a static site while keeping the blog feature active. Many Themes have developed navigation menus that allow you to feature your static pages and allow your visitors to locate pertinent blog posts by using category listings. If you take a look at the LynnRaeDesigns.com site, you can see how the main, top navigation menu displays all the main pages of the site – like our services and FAQ’s. The submenu (the menu bar underneath the main menu) lists our categories for blog posts. You may not even realize this site operates using WordPress – since the static content is at the forefront of the site.

Your Sidebar.

Siderbars of the past were used to help a visitor navigate through the blog, with lists upon lists of categories, recent posts and links to other blogs (i.e. blogroll). When positioning your site as a static site using WordPress, you can take the sidebar area and use it to display important content that you don’t want your visitors to miss – like your newsletter sign up, a feature product or our most recent video. The options are endless for your sidebars (save width restrictions) and it offers a great way to get content in front of your visitor fast. You also have the option to remove the sidebar feature from your site and make every page a simple, full page of content. One of the best ways to use this feature is for sales pages and thank you pages – you can create new programs quickly by creating pages within your site that do not appear in the navigation menu, but can be accessed by typing in the full page address.

Wrapping it Up.

I’ve tried to touch on the major points in using WordPress as your website – by far not passing along everything (there’s just too much info to include in one article!!) The key thing to remember is – the line between static websites and blogs is so blurred now, the options are really endless. You can have the best of both worlds –the usability of a blog and the professional look of a static site – and it won’t take months or thousands of dollars to create – -and the end result gets you better SEO, a cleaner, user-friendly website and control over your own site.

~Victoria Potts Keale is a newbie blogger, website designer, entrepreneur extraordinaire, mom, wife, daughter, sister… well, you get the gist. She lives in her hometown of St. Louis, MO in an old haunted farmhouse with her 2 kids and drummer hubby. She has 15 tattoos and wants more. She loves 80’s music. She thinks writing bios in the 3rd person is wacky. You should email her and tell her what else to put in her bio – victoria@lynnraedesigns.com – but don’t spam her, cause she’ll get angry.

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