Web Site Templates

One of the tough and time consuming parts of putting together a new Web site is coming up with a page design that's appealing to the client. You can talk about colors and columns and layouts all day and still not come up with what the customer wants. So, when the first design doesn't hit the target, back to the drawing board for a second try. This is both frustrating and expensive. An alternative is to use a Web page template. Page templates are pre-designed Web pages that can be modified to meet the requirements of your Web site. Today, many Web design firms use page templates.

Templates

Page templates can be found on the Internet. Some are free and some you have to pay for. As you may imagine, not all templates are created equal. I have looked around and found some great sources for page templates. Use the links on this page to browse some of the better template sites on the Web. Please also read my tips on selecting a page template for your Web site.

Free Templates

I've found two good Web sites featuring free Open Source Web page templates. Many of the page templates on these sites have the restriction that you give credit back to the original creator of the template. What this amounts to is that on one page on your site your going to have a link at the bottom of a page that in small letters says "page design by SonSo." Not a big deal really, if you think about it. A final piece of advice is that if your going to spend your time looking at page templates, make notes about what you like so we can talk about it later.

The first free template site is called Open source Web Design. With over 2000 Web page templates, they have some great designs and some real dogs. You might start in the "Our Favorite Designs" section.

The second free template site is called Open Designs Community. This site has fewer templates but some of them are pretty impressive. Also, some authors here are selling template extras. Overall this site is a little more complicated, but they do have some good designs. by the way, don't let the foreign language text distract you. It's called "Ipusm", and the idea is to get you to look at the page design instead of the text.

For Pay Templates

4Templates.com has a good selection of page templates and the prices are reasonable. If there is any one thing wrong with this site, it's that they have too many page designs. I find that I can locate templates I like faster if I use their Quick Search feature and then look for styles like "clean" and "plain". Your tastes may be different, but this is a good way to narrow down your selection and find something you like quick.

Page templates can't be returned once you download them. So, think before you buy. If you want advice or input on what would work for your site, contact me and I'll be glad to go over options with you.

WordPress Themes

WordPress is a very popular blogging platform. Less known is that it's also a great platform for small business Web sites. Many WordPress Themes, for free and for pay, are available for business sites. Some don't even have a blog. On the other hand, a blog can be a great tool for communicating with your customers.

The Theme Directory at WordPress.org has a good selection of free themes for WordPress. There are may places selling WordPress Themes now. A Google search for "WordPress Theme" will produce thousands of results. Two for pay theme sites I like are: iThemes WordPress Themes and Brian Gardner's WordPress Themes. These themes make a good starting point for a solid Web presence. Some of the "Business Card" themes at iThemes are quite inexpensive and also appropriate for small business sites. There are many other theme sites on the Internet. The images at the right link to premium WordPress Theme sellers. Look around and see what you can find.

Selecting a Page Template or Theme

The first thing I have to say is that too many page templates use young attractive models in the art work. Don't let yourself be distracted by this. Chances are your going to change that picture and the whole page will be different anyway. Try to look at page templates in terms of lines and block forms. Do you like the overall page structure? Don't fall in love with the graphic and ignore that the page doesn't have a good structure for what you want to use it for. Pages with three columns require a lot of content to fill up. If your building a small site, they might not be what you need.

I could go on, but you get the idea. I hope you found some useful information here and you will contact me with your questions and comments.

Thank you,

Sam Fenstermacher