What are Web Templates?

"Web Templates" are designs generally sold or offered free as a starting design for your website. A predesigned layout that is pleasing to look at and will make building your website much faster since you already have a starting point.

Sound good right?

Wrong!

Web templates generally are built in programs like photshop or frontpage. A template designer is building a static page and has no clue what site funstionality your website will have.

If you are using web based programing such as a shopping cart or e-commerce program, you need a template that integrates into your programing. If that sounds complicated, it is.

Building a website is more complicated than just having a nice design. The design must be flexible enough to take in every possible varriable and still maintain its intended design.

The web template nust be 100% browser compatible. Most frontpage driven sites only work properly on microsoft internet explorer. Unfortunately the number of people using that browser is declining and represents well below 30% of the internets users. Couple that with the fact that it was not designed to work in in specific enviorment or in combination with any programing, most webmasters will not be able to utilize the template.

We see clients buying templates for a few dollars and then expecting our designers to make them work. When we tell them that will take 10 hours or more at $100 an hour they realized they wasted their money.

Web templates must be specifically designed for a system or for your web aplication.

Those bulk offers you see and all the free downloads are great if you plan on building static pages or just using the site for a personal home page. But programing based business websites are a whole different game.

It is not usually possible to use the templates for any real application.