What Is A WordPress Theme?

A WordPress theme is a type of website template specific to the WordPress content management system (CMS) that allows content like images, text and video to be combined with the automation offered by WordPress and the massive library of extensions available online.

WordPress is a content management system that allows users with limited technical experience to use a Microsoft Word-like interface to make changes to the content of a web page or website. 

All of the technical parts of creating web pages like headers, footers, sidebars, and menus are all automatically created by the WordPress theme. This allows a one-time investment in website design and development to pay dividends repeatedly over time.

WordPress themes can be downloaded for free, purchased from template farm websites, or custom created for your particular application. Additionally, an existing theme that is a close fit for your organization can be modified by a skilled coder to meet your needs exactly.

Utilizing the WordPress CMS and a WordPress theme also makes a massive library of extensions and add-ons available for your use. These small programs attach to your WordPress theme like legos and allow your website to do very specific things like take payments, send emails, or optimize SEO that would have had to be done manually in the past.

Each extension can also be updated for security.  Adding lots of extensions to your WordPress theme can create powerful web pages and websites at an amazingly low price, however it also increases your responsibility to update your theme and each individual plugin. Further complicating matters, none of the pieces update at the same time, so the updates to one piece can make another piece stop functioning. Be sure to test after you update.