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.

Everybody can not but agree with the fact that clip art is the great way to add zest to your newsletters, flyers, brochures and websites. With the help of these design products you may decorate invitations for any holiday, create placemats and holiday crafts, or just brighten up your screen with attractive icons. We are lucky because Internet provides the excellent opportunities for each holiday and occasion.

But it is very easy to get lost in such variety of clipart-related sites and resources that offer cute images, pictures, illustrations, coloring pages, backgrounds, banners, fonts, icons, lines, skins, worksheets and wallpapers and much more. If you don’t want to waste your time searching the right solution for your project, you may take advantage of using this amazing clipart catalog – ProClipArt.com. ProClipArt.com is a brand new project aimed towards providing an easy way to find exactly what you are looking for. It is the most comprehensive and complete database of the resources that offer clipart images, professional clipart and free cliparts.

This clipart catalog provides links to the clipart-related sites that are really worth looking at. All sites there are categorized to make searching more convenient for you. So you can browse by topic or by category. Next to each site you will find its brief description, but clicking on the site title gives the visitors’ more detailed presentation of all the products and services available there.

Another great thing about ProClipart.com is that its database is being constantly updated so be sure to check back shortly. Take a look around and you’ll find a lot of new good places to get premium clipart from this Clipart Catalog!

Campbell-Ewald has launched a new design for Chevrolet. As far as I understood from the post on Digital Web Magazine the design is good since it validates. Following standards is good of no doubt. But if we get back to the design (I mean graphical design not coding!)…

With the new design they have lots of free space at the bottom of the home page and with some other sub-pages as well. I can hardly say it’s a good design as I fail to get the meaning of this and I really doubt that there’s any functionality with this space. It just makes me feel like some elements still have to be loaded or… that the site is not finished yet.

Template Monster has a nice template with almost the same layout but without such a free-space-that-makes-me-feel-like-the-site-is-not-finished. With this template they managed to avoid this problem actually when you look at this template you never think that it can be a problem at all.

How to start with converting your design into an HTML?

Jim Amos from Campbell-Ewald suggests using HTML stamps… Not sure if I will use them but they surely worth looking at.

A List Apart appeared with a new design. Far more complicated than the old variant but still easy to navigate. It took me a couple of minutes to accustom to it. Really great wok!

Want to plant a tree not leaving your office? With ecotonoha it is as easy as ABC.

Every message transforms into a leaf and every 100 leaves transform into a tree.

Really nice project and really helpful.

It’s not a secret that there are lots of websites which offer different software which is supposed to be purchased for free. Website templates are rather popular with such sites.

Template Monster has a special department which is supposed to deal with such issues… Lots of people are to help Piracy department on this as it’s not an easy task to detect warez sites. Template Monster considers reporting about warez sites as help only and offers no reward for such help though not everybody agrees on this.

Here’s an interesting discussion on WHT if to report piracy or not to Template Monster.

Here’s a nice Color Jeopardy to test you color knowledge and feeling.

Not too sophisticated though. I would like to have there more difficult questions…

I’ve came across an interesting post at DMOZ forum. This is about Template Monster’s description at the directory. As far as I understand they are trying to fix it but with no luck yet. My impression is that DMOZ Editors are irritated with Template Monster’s affiliate program and they’ve managed to perceive Template Monster to make some changes with its terms and conditions for the affiliate program… And that is the main problem

I’m sure now that Template Monster does not use ‘Black Hat Marketing’ as they could just bribe DMOZ’s editor to avoid all this problems. interested in knowing more on how to bribe DMOZ’s editors? Here’s the special site for you then Corrupt DMOZ Editor.

Good for Ana Thema!