Thursday, December 27, 2012

Using Website Templates For Web Site Development

By Jemser Reik Bary


Building a website used to be a very costly and time consuming exercise. It involved finding a web designer, and lots of communication before you finally got what you wanted. Needless to say, this was very expensive. Technical advances and the advent of Content Management Systems (CMS) (which provide the backbone to most current websites) have both simplified website building and made it much cheaper. Getting your site to look great however, will require you to invest in a website template.

Website templates are really just stick on designs. 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 capability 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.

Website designs are usually relatively cheap. You can save a huge amount of time and energy as you can be up and running with your design in an hour or two. You however need to choose your website templates with care.

You should make sure that you are aware of any issues before hand before you commit to a design. While a design may be attractive to you, you should avoid one that is being used by many other sites. As much as possible, you want to leave your visitors with the impression that your site is unique.

You should avoid getting bogged down in customising your website. 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.

Choose your theme with care. Before you spend any money, be double sure that the template will work for you. Being electronic media, you won't be able to get your money back - 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. You should check support forums and FAQ's for the template or email the designer before you buy.

If you can, select a website template that offers more benefit to your customers. Some templates include utilities and facilities that are useful for particular niches, for example photo gallery website templates.

Ensure that the website template you get fits the base 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 conclusion:

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 to avoid problems later on. On the other hand don't get bogged down in customising your site, rather address the issue of ensuring you provide your visitors with fresh interesting articles.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment