How to Create a Responsive Layout for Your WordPress Site

To properly create a responsive layout for your WordPress site, you need to understand the basics.

You know that creating a WordPress site is going to be important for your online presence. While there are many other platforms that are available for web building, WordPress has truly become one of the most favored for many different reasons. It does come with its challenges. Not only is it important to build a WordPress site properly, but now strong consideration has to be given to building a responsive layout.

What does responsive mean?

Not all that long ago the website owner only had to be concerned as to how their site appeared when accessed through the major search engines. Now they have to be worried about their appearance in many different types of mobile devices. Not only do we need to consider the user experience, but we also have to ensure our web presence is fully responsive for these devices in order to be in favor with Google and other search engines.
They key to a good responsive website is ensuring that it can adapt nicely to any screen that it is being displayed on. This is going to take time and work, and comes with some challenges, although these can be overcome.
What a lot of WordPress site owners do is rely on purchasing themes that have the responsive features built into them. This works in some cases, but for site owners that really want the best performance from their sites these themes are often limited.
For those who are not happy with their responsive theme it may mean that they need to hire formal web designers to create a responsive website for them.
Then there are those that want to have full control over the performance of their website so they will take on the challenge of building their own responsive layout for their WordPress site. In order to do this they need to learn how to work with a framework.

What is a framework?

A framework for a website is basically a collection of files and folders needed for the building of the site. These files include HTML, JS documents and CSS (these consist of different codes).
Being as most websites have similar structures, a framework just cuts down on the need for repetitive work. The same codes can be used for many different websites, and then just customized for the specific website needs.

The framework can be used for different processes. The programmer can use it for the implementation of the connecting of the data base to the site content using a PHP language. The web designer utilizes the HTML documentation for the planning of the content layout along with the CSS style sheets.
There are two basic frameworks, one that is applicable to the backend and the other is the frontend.
Focusing on the responsive website structure you are going to want a responsive framework to work with. There are several that you can purchase. Zurb is one and Bootstrap is another. You may understand this better knowing that it was created by one of Twitter’s developers. It has been around since 2010 while many others have been around a lot longer than that. It is one of the most popular because it has a lot of capabilities already built into it. It possesses the necessary CSS, HTML and JavaScript elements that are going to be needed for the responsive website.
There are some frameworks that are referred to as grid systems but are in essence still frameworks. They are noted for being user friendly to work with.
If you have decided that Bootstrap is the way to go then it is going to give you a couple of options. If you have no knowledge however concerning CSS, HTML or JavaScript then you have a fair amount of learning ahead of you. You can gain this knowledge by paying for programs that will teach you this, or you can seek out the free tutorials. At first it is going to be a little frustrating for you, but if you persevere you will get your responsive website built just the way you want it.
You may want to begin with learning the basics of HTML first. This is the language that is used for building web pages. Then JavaScript is the language that is used for the programming of the pages. Finally CSS is the style sheets used for your content.
Once you have a thorough understanding of these then you will not be not be intimidated by the frameworks.
Once you have built your new responsive website, be sure to check out its look and performance on as many different mobile devices as possible.