Friday 28 December 2012

Effective Web Site Building With Website Templates

By Jemser Reik Bary


Building a website used to be a very expensive and time consuming affair. You had to look for a designer, explain your requirements, and then spend a lot of time going through lots of different designs and features until you finally got what you wanted. Needless to say, this was very expensive. Technical advances and the advent of Content Management Systems (CMS) have made building websites cheaper and easier. However if you want your site to look distinctive, you need to go a step further and add on a great web site design.

Website templates are basically designs you can patch on to your site. The most basic ones are built with the language of the web - HTML, and you need to add in your content piecemeal. More complex designs are designed to fit on a framework such as WordPress, Joomla or Drupal so that your site has all the power of the framework as well as the beauty or utility of the design you select. These ones are usually easy to install and include the ability to customise them with your own images and text. You can often get as good a result as from a custom built website.

You can get a professional website template for very little money. Despite the saving in time and effort, you still need to be very careful to choose an appropriate design from the very beginning. Consider your customers and your industry so that your choice provides them with appropriate features and ease of use.

To get the best out of your design there are things you should be careful about. While you want to choose an attractive template, try to make sure that the design is not being used all over the web. As much as possible, you want to leave your visitors with the impression that your site is unique.

Try to avoid the trap of constantly adjusting your sites look. Choose a design with a good degree of customisation such as the ability to change its logo, background, and colours, but don't spend ages tweaking its appearance. Traffic visits for your information, content and resources not your design. Remember the objective is to save you time and effort.

Be very careful in choosing your template. Before you spend any money, be double sure that the template will work for you. You will not be able to get a refund based on the fact that you thought it was suitable - especially if it works the way the designer said it would. You need to be absolutely sure that it has been designed to work the way you want. If possible, look at support forums and FAQ's for the template or email the designer before you buy.

If possible, try to select a design that provides more benefit to your visitors. Some templates include utilities and facilities that match particular niches, for example artist website templates.

Ensure that the website template you get fits the foundation you have installed e.g. a website template built for one CMS will not work on another. Even though the designs may look identical they are completely different under the hood.

In summary:

Website templates are carefully crafted to enable you to build a high quality professional looking site without you needing any web design skills. Be sure to choose your template with care so as to avoid problems later on. On the other hand don't get bogged down in customising your site, rather put more effort into filling your website with good content.




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