Today I would like to talk about web templates customization.

If you have purchased a web template but still worry that the same web site design can be used by others, you have two ways. The first one - you may choose to pay for a “unique purchase” for a higher fee and lock the design from being sold to others. In this case you will have not quite original design because of the previous sales that will lead to potentially the same design with others. And as the alternative of this, you may customize the template and make it more suitable to the needs of your project.

Some people mislead the others saying that customization of the website templates can cost them as much as hiring a webmaster or designer. Well, everything depends on the type of work and the preferred changes.

Once I purchased a template and ordered customization at templatetuning.com. So I would be happy to share my experience with all of you.

Templatetuning.com being a partner of Template Monster sells TM’s products and provides customization services. With their help you may change graphics, image animation, feel and look of a menu, modify page content, layout and resolution. Your any wish will be fulfilled within a couple of business days.

So, if you have already selected the desired template from their vast collection, you should pay for it first. And no one cares that the color scheme or any other template elements don’t suit your project, you pay for a template as a whole. The price includes the price for the images, layout of the pages, and the source files (fla, swf, html, psd). Also keep in mind that the cost of customization services depends on a specific web template and can vary.

Before:

After:  

Then you proceed to the Chat Room, and the Sales Manager will help you create a customization description for your template. He or she will calculate the total amount you have to pay for the customization work and set time-frames for the work to be done. By the way, here is the direct link to the templatetuning.com support chat

Moreover, every customer of Templatetuning.com acquires a login and a password to his account. The account interface will enable you to see the progress of your customization work and be in touch with Templatetuning.com Support Team.

One more example.

Before:

After:  

If you are still unsure in the quality of service they provide, you may customize the template by yourself. Customizing web templates shouldn’t be too hard … But to be honest it comes down to so many different things:

How comfortable are you around HTML/CSS?
Does the template use any other languages such as PHP and will your changes effect that?
What sort of software (if any) are you going to use to make your changes?
How complex is the template in the first place?

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.

The designing process is very interesting and absorbent. But there is no matter how exciting it may seem, this process requires artistic talent, experience and a working knowledge of some basic layout principles.

Here are some useful tips to think about when designing your website.

1. The needs of your visitors should be the part of the design, not as an afterthought. Don’t try to create something extraordinary and intricate to surprise everybody. This will only confuse them. Just remember that users like consistency.

2. Make sure you have a really good landing page, otherwise people will leave as fast as they came in.

3. Usability is by far the most important criterion while estimating a business website. It is closely connected to the needs of your visitors as well. So, the things like where to place the line navigation, search box and etc will all affect usability.

4. One of the main rules is to keep your website design simple. The simplicity of navigation, simplicity of the text is a guarantee that user does not leave your site as soon as possible.

5. Make sure that your site has enough information to meet the standards. But at the same time, don’t overwhelm it with lots of facts, forms, tables and info blocks. Everything should be balanced and harmoniously combined.

6. If you are selling something, of course, you should write effective and informative products descriptions. Don’t try to use ornate writing style just only to draw your visitors’ attention. The more stiltedly you write, the lesser people trust. Speaking about it I always recollect the words of David Ogilvy: “What you say is more important than how you say it”.

7. Define your target audience so it wouldn’t appear that you are selling “ice cubes to Eskimos”.

8. Make sure you have a really good and informative “About” page where you may tell the visitors who you are and give them a reason to trust your advise and services.

9. Don’t overwhelm your site with the text and graphics, tables and data. Having an empty space is also very important. Whitespace should be carefully planned because it helps to create balance and unity of the whole web site.

10. When you think that your site is almost ready and the work is nearing to the end, have someone to evaluate it. For this purpose you may write a post on different web design forums asking for reviews and constructive criticism. Practice shows that no matter how much you would look, others can find more.

What can a website do? How much should it do? Uncle Arthur thinks a website should make a visitor want to remain on your website. Can a website entertain and communicate a message at the same time? See Uncle Arthur’s Top 10 Best Flash Website Templates.

Why not? If a website is designed with motion and sound it can become much more attractive - if it’s done in the right way. It can’t be boring to old customers. It can’t take too long to load. It must still be searchable for the traffic of potential new customers. So Uncle Arthur has the Top 10 Best Flash Website Templates that do their job in the very best way. They are displayed below, just click on the thumbnail to see the full websites sights and sounds.

That’s the Uncle Arthur’s Top 10 Best Flash Website Templates - Feel refreshed, creative, interested? Good because your visitors need that feeling too. Get your website project started today - the high-tech, low-cost way - with a quality Flash Template.

Super Value Shopper,
Uncle Arthur “Dropshopper” Browning

What’s in a name you ask? Uncle Arthur is here to explain that there is a lot in a name, especially in the world wide web. What you name your website has many meanings and effects. Now center yourself for these words of wisdom Superbloggers!!

Today Uncle Arthur brings you 5 Truths of the domain NAME. When you buy a domain name you can’t just say, “I want what I want dot com.” Buying a domain name takes thought and some planning - so read these 5 Truths:

1) Keep your domain name as simple as possible. Keep it easy to read, easy to say, easy to spell, easy to remember. The reasons for this truth are that a long and complex name has a much higher chance for misreading or misspelling.

2) Make the name as keyword relevant as possible. This makes it easy to remember and gives better search engine rankings too.

3) Buy each form of the name with plural or hyphenated variations if possible. This strategy lessens the loss of customers who might misspell your primary domain and it protects your name from the competitors who buy domain names similar to yours to forward to their website, and take your traffic.

4) If you intend to have a web site for commercial or business reasons register it with the .com extension. The .com extension has more appeal, it’s what most people will automatically enter when going by memory. So if the .com version of your domain is not available, choose a different domain name. You can also buy the other extension names for further protection.

5) If you already have brand recognition then use your name as the domain if possible. And you might buy a set of two domain names, one that includes your brand name and another that includes keywords. But be sure to have one as the primary to be submitted to search engines, and that the others are set up for forwarding only, not to be submitted to the search engines to avoid confusion.

These truths will get you maximal traffic from people and search engines - Uncle Arthur promises!

The Magic of the Name
Uncle Arthur “Merlin” Browning

Atlantis, the Island of Atlas, is the name of a legendary island first mentioned in Plato’s dialogues “Timaeus” and “Critias”.  Plato said Atlantis was “beyond the pillars of Heracles” and was a naval power that conquered many parts of Western Europe and Africa 9,000 years before the time of Solon, or approximately 9500 BC.

After a failed attempt to invade Athens, Atlantis sank into the ocean “in a single day and night of misfortune”.  The civilization of Atlantis left it’s mark on many ancient civilizations - Greece, Egypt, Crete, Phoenecia, Chaldea and others.

Atlantis has been credited with many incredible technologies that are not fully understood - amongst them a magnetic application of gravity to power ships, and clairvoyance.  Vestiges of Atlantis’ knowledge is found in many ancient civilizations.  One of the most startling discoveries was a pair of columns in ancient Egypt that could not be fully translated.  The Egyptian hieroglyphics named Atlantis and gave information about the lost continent, but the Atlantean glyphs remained uncipherable until I compared those markings with the account of an ancient seer’s scroll found in Ephesus some 3000 years ago.

The translation was a startling account of the future that contained a list of “10 ways to get search engines to pay attention to your website.”  Needless to say, I will wait for no authorization to give that list here to you now Superbloggers!

1 - May the sons of your sons always optimize for keyword content.

2 - Let each title tag be written with a unique title.

3 - Write quality content into every Meta tag.

4 - Content is ever the king and always the king.

5 - Be ye wise in writing image alt text.

6 - You will create a Robots.txt file as a map of your web site.

7 - You will create a Sitemap.xml file to tell engines of all sections and pages of your website.

8 - Let there be no duplicate content from one page unto another.

9 -  Create custom error pages that look like the rest of your site and keep search engine robots from reaching a dead end in your site and leaving.

10 - Make sure that your website is fully validated for well-formed HTML.

Although this was just one bit of the Atlantean technology in the glyphs, Uncle Arthur is proud to bring it to you first.

“When Content Was King”
Uncle Arthur “of the Ancients” Browning

Uncle Arthur has wandered the meanings of existence and encountered many strange entities.  Not all entities are friendly.  Many of these objects, phenomena and beliefs are hostile or deceptive to others.  Don’t be deceived, Superbloggers!!!

What can we do about it???  Let’s get realistic for just a moment.  We can do what we are able, from where we are, at this time and place.  We can make sure that our websites are user-friendly.

Think that’s too basic or childish?  Uncle Arthur insists that any user-friendly website on the net will save and encourage the wanderers that happen into your world.

How to Make Your Website User-Friendly:

1) Visitors must know which page they are viewing! - The best way to ensure your visitors don’t get lost on your website is if you title your pages. Superbloggers, make sure this title is the title in your navigation area too.

2) Visitor must be able to easily get to other pages using your navigational area! - Make sure that every main page in your website has a link from your navigation area with the exact titles as the titles on your pages.

3) Visitors must enjoy looking at your pages! - Your background color and text color must make a good combination.  Uncle Arthur knows you will need to take this into serious consideration. If your color scheme is unappealing, visitors will leave no matter how good your subject matter may be.

4) Visitors must be interested in your photos and graphics! - If your photos are too big or you have too many on a page the visitor will leave.  And big pcture files also have big download times.

5) Visitors do not want to put up with errors and page problems! - Who would?  Test for errors and user-friendliness on your pages. Have several other people look at your website in different browsers and different screen display resolutions.  Ask them about color and esthetics in your layout, fonts, graphics and logos.

Keeping your website user-friendly is one of the best things you can accomplish for your visitors. Taking the time to ensure usability is nothing compared to how many visitors you will lose if you have a not-so-friendly website. Ensuring readability, fast downloading, and performing multiple tests will get you started in the right direction of designing user-friendly websites.

Get It Right - Keep It Right!
Uncle Arthur “Wanderer” Browning

My fellow Americans I want your vote to make SEO a “kinder, gentler” place to show your webpage. Uncle Arthur “Get’s it!!” Uncle Arthur knows the web needs a “thousand points of light,” and “the vision thing.” Uncle Arthur already knows “It’s the economy, Stupid.”

SEO can be done with “family values” in mind, to “bring real change,” “not just the same old gridlock,” we’ve seen on “both sides of the aisle,” from “Washington insiders.” Uncle Arthur is ready to lead this nation into the 21st century and to meet all the challenges of an SEO future.

“When I am President, you will be able to say no more scandals, no more cut and run, no more stay the course, no more benchmarks, no more deep dish pizza billboards in Baghdad.”

Fourscore and seven years ago there was no internet, only telephone, but now. . . these are the days of our lives, like sand through Shawn Hannity or Rush Limbaugh’s hourglass.”

Here is Uncle Arthur’s program for SEO policy. And if you can’t offer a better policy for this nation then shut up! No child left behind, with the highest pharmaceutical prices on the planet, forever!!!!

1) Research your Keywords - Ask what keywords someone might type in when searching for products you sell. After a  brainstorming session write down all you were able to think of. Now take two keywords from your list that you feel potential customers will use most frequently. Try to make your keywords the ones most related to your business.

2) Site Text - Your website text is made of wording on your web page. Text content is king. Search engines love unique content and your keywords should be placed in the best locations in your content. Make sure that your copy reads well around them as it needs to make sense. Keywords should be placed in headings, top of pages, in bold or italics, used as link text for other pages of your site and in your title tag.

3) Link Building - One good way of thinking about links is that for every link from a website that leads to yours is a “vote” for your site. Every quality link you receive can improve your search rankings. The quality of inbound links is more vital than quantity.

Over time you should watch and record your search engine rankings by doing a Google search for your chosen keywords  to see where you rank. You can also monitor where your visitors are coming from by watching your hosting reports.

I am pleased as punch to present this environmentally green program for SEO. When there is a chicken in every pot and we have a microwave in every restroom, then and only then shall we rest. Well, don’t let the souless communistic regime keep you awake nights anymore, listen to Uncle Arthur - because he is politically correct and “he gets it right,” the first time, not 16 years later.

I do not believe that the American citizens and the American economy are like a fat cashcow, to be milked, and milked and plundered under threat of slaughter by the corporate interests in Washington. Nor do I think the underhanded corporate practices of thrifts, credit card banks and mortgage credit entities should go unnoticed, as they essentially rape our citizens of their earnings. NO DOLLAR LEFT BEHIND!!!

When’s the last time you got to vote for a policy instead of a politician?
Arthur “Hanging Chad” Browning

Where can I start? This is not an easy story for Uncle Arthur. I do not buy porn. I hardly ever measure my penis. So why me? I have come to realize it’s not just me, it’s the dark dread of Spam World!!!!! The Spam World that play’s on our human weaknesses and fears to sell it’s products!!!!!

I thought that Spam World was trying to make me crazy with a barrage of porn and penis size email ads. But now I know they do it to everyone (don’t they?).

Even women get these ads. And it’s not just porn and penis size. If a girl constantly has to think about her feminine odors and phermones and hair color and dating questions she might feel that she’s only thought of as a sexual animal right? Well porn and penis size makes me feel bad too.

What can we do about it? Well, Uncle Arthur now believes that the world is slowly being divided into two large camps. Those camps are divided by spam into “those who believe they are sexual animals” and “those who are fighting that belief with every waking and dreaming moment.”

It is important to stand up to Spam World, don’t give in!!!Say it, Say it!!! I AM NOT A SEXUAL ANIMAL! I DON’T WANT PORN! MY PENIS IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!!!!!

Uncle Arthur guarantees that if you shout these self affirming messages every day (2-3 times on awakening and going to sleep, maybe after meals or TV) you will begin to build a real resistance to the dark dreads of Spam World.

I had to explain this many times recently to my Super Bloggers who sent in the examples of what they had been receiving in their email night and day from Spam World. Here’s just one small fraction of their messages:

“In company girls may state, that man’s passion and ability matters much more, than the size of his love stick.  But we all know, that privately, they confess to the opposite! The truth is that large pen!s is more potent and arousing!”

“Vixens avow, that too skinny and short male sticks in no way are able to please them! They just don’t stimulate the vaginal nerve endings effectively! By good luck, due to MegaDik additional inches can easily be obtained now!”

“Don’t let your average-sized dic’k spoil your romance! Let your pen!s grow to a perfect size, and make women crave for it! Give that a try now and watch her obedient to your new male power in her eyes.”

“Show that you’re a real man deserving a real phallus! Big Phallus is a symbol of masculine power! No woman would refuse from getting laid by a full-size dic’k.”

“Turn your small knob into a huge meat stick! Thin and not so long pen!ses absolutely can’t give satisfaction! They just don’t touch all sensitive spots inside female pussy sufficiently! Only real men deserve success in this world!”

“The advantages of having a big pen!s are innumerable! Are you out of luck? Only real men have all the luck! Grow to be a fortunate fellow with a huge stick! Don’t doubt, she will be happy to find a massive love stick in your pants!”

Some of these websites even give penis growth newspapers, forums, chat, etc. Uncle Arthur asks you now - Is this what we want for our culture - a Spam World culture?

Don’t allow yourself to be turned into a sexual animal!!
Arthur “None of Your Business” Browning

Uncle Arthur sometimes has to take up the hard subjects with you. Today is one of those times. We must understand time travel to more fully grasp the power of links - especially for legal linking to other articles and feeds. Let us begin with a statement of the problem at hand.

The Associated Press is only one company that has made a lawsuit for copyright infringement. The practice that they feel is illegal is one that many websites and blogs use each day - showing a fragment or a headline from an article and adding a link to the full article. This is a reminder of earlier days when article aggregators feeds were legally tested for linking. And search engines do this everyday.

Now bear with me - because change creates tension in any situation in which it is occurring. Some traditional news agencies feel infringed upon by internet articles aggregation feeds. Is this worry based in logical or legal reasoning? Change occurs over time - and links are a direct spatial reference to other spatial occurrences.

Time travel is not only possible, it is essential to daily life. Time travel is not what you see in sci-fi movies. In actuality there are many forms of time travel - into the past, future and parallel variations of every different time continua. Time is an infinitely elastic mode, not to be confused with space, and infinitely elastic state.

Questions arise, like: Is it legal to use headlines of articles without permission from copyright holders?

Is it legal to publish lead-ins, taglines or short phrases from articles without permission from copyright holders?

Is it legal to create a business that sorts publications and sends referrals to articles to others without permission from copyright holders?

Is it legal to make marketing statements about others’ articles like “hot news” when you create a link to an article?

When these questions are seen through the viewpoint of time travel continua the questions become much more understandable. Questions like “when” and “if” take on the dimensions of “ever” or “never.” And then you must look at
the problem of “in which universe?” And the concern of with or without prescience (before) or postscience (after) the article is conceived or ends. If you agree that a copyright has no end then it could be said to be infinite - which is arguably nonmeasurable or is arguably nonexistent.

So let’s look at the real question - “Does a link hurt anybody or any copyright?” Answer me that and Uncle Arthur will support your findings every single time - whether you are right or wrong because you cannot conceivably be in the
same time and space at the same time ever again. You must change just as time and the universe change in a subconstant way.

Linking the Future,
Arthur “Time Traveler” Browning