End-users Themes

• Introduction
  • On separation of content and design

Introduction

In October a "Theme" represents the entire front-end structure of a website. Not to be confused with a "Skin" that would represent the look-and-feel only (stylesheet swap). A theme can potentially have multiple skins as a feature.

Themes in October consist of a collection of files that combine content and design:

• pages
• partials
• layouts
• content
• assets
• components

On separation of content and design

It is generally a good idea to structurally separate content, design and functionality because this keeps things organized but in reality content, design and functionality are very closely related and one cannot be freely changed without affecting the others.

We can probably all agree on the fact that you CANNOT swap content, functionality and design freely between a webshop for sextoys and a webportal for preschools but that you CAN keep content and add, remove or change functionality.

But can you keep content and swap design?

This probably depends on how much effort you put into optimizing your site for conversion. If you do put a lot of effort into this, you will never be drastically changing designs but rather do some split-testing and tweak them. Most amateur webmasters never do this but almost every high-end corporate or e-commerce site does. In terms of conversion content and design go hand in hand and design goes far beyond "look at this new theme I installed over the weekend".

Last modified: 2020-07-15 16:04:33