CMS (Content Management System) based websites or websites which allow the owner to add their own content such as text, images and other data, without needing to understand programming language, have become very popular and WordPress is the recognized leader. After hitting the internet just a decade ago, this format for building websites has become the top used web creation sites around and is not only used for bloggers but by Fortune 500 companies too. In the time that it’s been around, there have been many trends that have come and gone. So, what’s in and what’s out in 2014 for WordPress?
What’s In?
There are some great new trends that have been hitting in the end of this year and will become even more necessary for 2014. Below are some of the trends that all WordPress users must be aware of if they want to stay on top of the industry and have rocking websites. First and foremost it is vital to have fast loading websites in order to have any success at all. There are very few people who are not accessing the internet from their computers and mobile devices these days and they don’t want any lag time. Simple and elegant along with interesting are the key words for web design in the New Year. The following are just a few trends to make faster loading websites.
Quality Fonts are Better Photos – The trend used to be photo heavy websites with just a few basic fonts like Arial and Times New Roman as the text. With the trend moving towards faster loading websites, this trend has changed to using creative fonts and keeping the photos to one full background photo or a header photo. Finally we can do away with Comic Sans and move on to more unique and fun fonts for our websites.
Flat Websites – Remember the days of drop shadows and gradients? Did you get frustrated trying to make them look perfect for your website? Well, worry no more, those days are gone and the trend is now turning to single and flat colors that allow the content to pop rather than the effects that you use.
Single Page Websites – These websites are quick to load and have been inspired by the enormous amount of people now accessing the internet via their mobile devices. WordPress is now offering a wide variety of one page templates for those who want all their content on one page. What’s even better, the menu items now shift from one area of the page to another rather than from page to page.
What’s Out?
Now that you know what’s in, let’s take a look at a couple of web design tools that are completely out. They are all out because they are not mobile friendly which seems to be the future trend for website development. WordPress is no longer offering any tools or graphics that will slow down the loading time of a website or that makes navigating the website difficult. This includes the following:
Framing – Framing has been a popular website trend for so long that it seems like it would never go away. Well, with faster loading pages, there simply isn’t room for this any longer. While they can offer websites that pop, they just aren’t practical anymore.
PDF Pages – PDF pages also need to go. Sure, they are easy to load on WordPress but for mobile users, it can be too difficult to switch from a web format to a PDF format. These downloads tend to crash mobile web browsers so these are definitely out.
Flash and Animations – If it isn’t already obvious why these are out, then it is simply because they don’t load quickly. Not to mention the fact that most of these animations don’t load on any mobile devices.
As has been well illustrated, the trend in WordPress web design is gearing websites towards the mobile community while still being friendly for PC and MAC users.