autemplates releases some templates from austarlian designers. Currently they offer about 5 AU templates and about 6000+ US templates. There’s nothing strange with such a proportion as autemplates uses product database of the another website templates vendor located in NY for their US templates.

Though there’re only 5 AU templates they look pretty nice. All of them are supplied with 2 pages (home & content) and contain no Flash.

Now when surfing TemplateMonster’s products you are able to find out more about the product type within a move of your mouse. You only need to point your cursor at the name of the product type and you will get a short description of it:

Full Package Template with 5-7 pages enhanced with templates of business card, banner and pop-up. As a rule it contains Flash animated headers.

I suspect that TemplateMonster’s support will get some relief now as there were lots of misunderstandings with types of products.

Just wanted to let everybody know that I’m looking for blogs related to web templates industry. If you know some please drop me a line james4www_at_gmail.com or you are welcome with comments as well.

When some results appear I will probably come back with a short review.

As for now the only worth-looking blog I’ve managed to find is CrownTemplates Blog. I was so gald to find that blog that added the link to it on the right yesterday.

We’ve decided to start reviewing with a template of a personal page as it could be a nice present with St. Valentine’s Day as Template Monster declares. The template we’ve decided to review first can be found here . But if you are lazy enough not to leave our blog, you are welcome to admire the screenshot below:

Running a personal page is always fun but it starts with a need of designing this page which may be a problem for those who are not about web design but about writing…

There are some special sections which should be with any web page: Home, About Us, Contact. Personal pages have two more “must” sections: Gallery, and My Family. That’s became almost a standard with current web designers. All of these sections are well represented with this template. Though there’s no special “contact us” section, there’s an “e-mail me” button at the bottom of the page. This is better with personal pages as there’s no much content for «contact us» section with this kind of sites and “e-mail meâ€? button is probably the best solution. Besides, there’s another one section - “Friends” which is fine section in which to place some links to your friends’ sites.

The layout of the template is rather unusual, but it can be so with such websites (personal pages), as they focus on some particular audience which is considered to be loyal to the site owner. The main queer point is that the main menu is in the right bottom corner. But judging this we should consider the style in which the template was designed. Though TM states that the template belongs to Neutral Style, I wouldn’t say that as it’s too aggressive to be neutral (color scheme, main clip art, etc.). Though most of the clipart can be changed I really doubt that this template could be bought by a Barbie-like girl.

On the other hand, we have an owner name in the right place and a photo under it. Such an arrangement is going to let the visitor know which website he came to from the very first moment. For those who are not newbies to the site, there’s a “Latest News” block which will keep you in the know, the text of which is replaced with photos on the Gallery page which is right to the point.

The combination of layout and design or in other words the combination of form and content is to achieve the only aim here - to develop the site which suites some rebellious and aggressive young people who wish to expose themselves through WWW.

P. S.
Racquel will review the same template. Just to provide you with several points of view. Hope her review will appear in a couple of minutes.

In tandem with Racquel I’ve decided to review some templates as well as web templates’ sites. Why?

The main reason is that this blog was stated to be a web log on the website templates industry (news mainly) and it’s not an easy task to find some news within the industry, as it’s rather new and the main vendors are not very fond of marketing tricks that usually bring about some news, but the lack of news doesn’t justify the absence of writing.

That’s why we’ve decided to dive into reviewing products and vendors of the industry. Though we don’t have any particular schedule for our writing process, we will try to make it more or less regular in hope that our efforts will be of some help to you when choosing a template or a template vendor.

Google appears with some changes having been made to its logo on the exact day of holiday. Some other companies, unlike Google, celebrate even small holidays much longer than one day. For example, Template Monster has appeared with logo changes and holiday discounts (for personal page templates only) on 11th of February and a discount period which will last till 16th of February.

The difference which separates these companies defines the companies’ celebration periods. Google is known throughout the world. Holidays for Google mean little more than just an opportunity to experiment with their logo. But for TemplateMonster it’s a fine marketing opportunity to attract more customers with reduced prices on their products.
What is good and what is wrong? I don’t know but I do hate those companies which pretend that there are no holidays on-line!

Btw, TemplateMonster.com offers a nice e-card to congratulate your Valentine.

An interview with David Braun CEO of TemplateMonster has appeared with Hosrtreview. The interview is rather huge but still informative. David talks not only about his company (btw, he mentioned that TM is going to surprise web design community with some new projects) but answering to the first question he gives a detailed description of his career with all the milestones. Worth reading…

by BizBrim.com

To create professional websites is not an easy task by any means. There are many things that you got to take into consideration like easy navigation, strategic links, clean coding, professional layout, easy downloading, scanability, usability and so on. These are the elements that differentiate a professional website from a mediocre one. So in a way it’s not designing the website that counts but how the website is designed.

The only option that most of us have in order to design a good website is to hire a web- designer. Web-designers can help you come up with a great website that looks professional and is coded to perfection, but what about the time factor, leave alone the costs. Here’s where web templates come to the rescue.
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by James Berg

A Web Template is a ready-made website design created to use it as a basis for fast and high-quality website development. Just add your text and pictures to our template – and you get a functional and individual site ready for upload!

A website template can be used to build your personal webpage or huge corporate site, online shop or offline presentation or even as a design for the software you develop! And everything you create is going to be easy, fast and professional!

Our templates can suit the needs of the beginners without making them spend months and months studying HTML and design software. They are also perfect for web designers looking for new ideas and constrained by tight schedules. These products will suit the needs of active businessmen who want to develop a web project with minimal cost and time investments or for a hosting company offering customers supplementary web design services.
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by Stefan Mischook

Once there was a time when website budgets where pretty substantial. It was easy for me in the late 90’s to find web site jobs at $5000 and $10 000 a shot. It got to the point that I would refuse anything under 5k!

Budgets slashed and the competition fierce

But those days are long gone, and now we have to put out web sites with budgets that are often times 10% of what they used to be! If you think that’s bad, it gets even worse - not only are the budgets slashed, the overall competition is stronger and in much greater numbers!

Putting out crappy looking web site doesn’t cut it anymore

Back in the early 90’s, many web designers were able to do well even if the work wasn’t the most beautiful. Today the web has matured and there are now many hotshot web designers out there, so putting out crappy looking websites just doesn’t cut it anymore … 1995 is long gone.
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