Being a confirmed Internet user, I frequently surf through online forums asking and replying to people’s questions. Of all the questions I answer, I see one that appears over and over again, what are pros and cons of the website templates?

So, for those of you who are interested, I decided to collect different people’s opinions apropos of this and express my own of course.

First of all let me say a couple of words about website templates and what they really are. Web templates are pre-made foundation designs for fast website creation that require some customization before uploading to your hosting provider. There are a great variety of such templates:

Flash web templates combine captivating animation effects and pleasant sound accompaniment. They are characterized by dynamism and interactivity and are very popular among Internet users and webmasters.

SWISH web template based on SWISH technology is a perfect match of live action and fascinating music.

Dynamic Flash photo gallery template is designed especially for photo galleries and can be a perfect solution for painters, photographers and artists.

E-Commerce templates are designed specially for online stores.

Blog templates or themes – with the blink of an eye you can easily change the look of your blog using these ready made web pages.

Different CMS templates - Joomla templates, Mambo templates, Drupal themes, PhpBB templates, PhpNuke templates – the list of web templates types seems to go on forever…

So, if you want to create a website, you may start with a template that can greatly work for you.

But other people may argue with this statement. They mostly think that web templates are nothing more than decorations. These products of web industry even can not be compared to what professional designers offer. To their mind, using a template is a cheating, because a true designer does not use templates. The opponents of the templates say: “These services provide a useless, even harmful distraction from what businesses and organizations actually need. Web and application design is not based on the templates. Rather, design is based on specific, contextual business and brand needs, concerns, and aims. These vary with each individual client.” But as for me, I cannot see any harmful distraction. On the contrary, the templates mostly being an original creation of professional designers can be a source of inspiration for others.

If you are a non-designer or a newbie in this sphere, you may easily use web templates to give your web pages a more professional look or just to try your skills. Website templates are great time saving and budget saving means for fast website creation. Use such templates for your routine work; this will give you more time to concentrate on the clients preferences.

Web templates make your site more consistent, so you won’t worry about each subpage correspondence to the general design. Build your first website with the help of a template until you become familiar with this work.

But unfortunately, a lot of people have an unpleasant experience with the templates. They complain of the low quality templates saying that most of them are coded improperly and with bloated markup. Bit I think it’s the matter of luck. The main thing here is to know good and reliable web templates distributors and resources that provide quality products and services.

Of course, it’s up to you whether to use the web templates or create your own design completely from scratch.

If you want to share your opinion or experience, make a post in the comment section. You are always welcome.

All the thumbnails of the website templates presented here are the original products of templatemonster.com.