What are web templates?

Web templates, also known as website or HTML templates, are a way of quickly getting a professional design for your website. When you buy a web template, you get a bunch of files that contain the basic site layout and dummy text that you can easily customize to finish your own design.

Why can't I just design my site from scratch?

You can, but unless you are a professional designer, it will not look anywhere near as good as a carefully chosen web template. If you hire a good web designer to make you a site you may be able to get even closer to what you really want but you will pay a huge amount more.

What are the main benefits of using web templates?

These days, website development software such as Microsoft Frontpage or Macromedia Dreamweaver mean that you don't have to know HTML to build a website. However, unless you have highly developed design skills, you will not be able to make your site look truly professional. That's where templates come in. For a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring a professional web designer, a template can make your site look fantastic.

Are there any disadvantages of using web templates?

We love web templates, but some people would say Yes to that question. As more than one person can buy the same template, your site may not be 100% unique and to some people that is a significant issue, one that motivates them to pay perhaps 20 or 50 times as much to get their website professionally built by a design company!

In practice however, we don't think that the issue of non-uniqueness is usually worth worrying about too much. Of course you should check that none of your direct competitors are using the same template. (None of your future competitors, who may not yet exist, will want to use your template after your site goes live!) And unless your business specifically caters to web designers, the likelihood is that few, if any, of your potential customers will ever detect that you used a web template - and even if one ever does, so what?! Using a template is a smart way to reduce costs immensely, and provided you use a little common sense when you choose your template, its non-uniqueness is very unlikely to ever be a real issue. For further information on the issues of exclusivity, you may wish to read our article, Why You Should Avoid Free Templates.

Who should consider using web templates?

Anyone who knows little or nothing about web page design and who wants to build a really attractive website as cheaply and easily as possible. This often includes the owners of shops, restaurants or bars, real estate agents, lawyers, churches or other religious (or secular) organizations, sports clubs and medical practitioners such as doctors and dentists.

Are there any types of sites for which templates are inappropriate?

The most attractive templates usually contain lots of graphics and these slow down the speed at which your pages will download. If speed is critical to your site visitors, you should consider either buying a simpler template with fewer graphics or avoiding templates altogether and sticking to a simple text-based design. That said, as more and more people start using cable or other fast connections to the internet, this concern is becoming less important; hence the rapidly increasing popularity of templates.

What do I get when I buy a website template?

That varies slightly from provider to provider, but in general you will usually get:

• an HTML file that defines the template layout
• files for each of the images on the page (usually in both PSD and GIF/JPG formats)
• font files (if graphics that need to be customized use non-system fonts)

Each of the template providers that we recommend provide you with everything you need! After paying, you will be sent an email link to download all the files.

What do I have to do to customize my web template?

The main thing is to change some of the text on an image or two - for example to put your company name in, or change the descriptions of menu items. This involves opening the image files in Photoshop or some other less expensive program that can edit PSD files, notably Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7 and Ulead PhotoImpact 7 & 8, clicking on the layer of the image that contains the text, deleting what's there and replacing it with your own text. This is a very simple process, even if you know nothing about image editing, and we have some great tutorials to help you.

The other very important thing is to replace the dummy text in the page layout with your actual text. This is really easy to do if you use simple web page authoring software like Microsoft Frontpage to edit your page. Using such software, you don't have to know HTML or any other programming language.

There are other things that can be done. For example, graphical elements can be rearranged to reshape the template, as shown in the examples below. This type of customisation is easy if you have some basic skills with Photoshop or another such graphics program and a web authoring system such as Frontpage or Dreamweaver.

	Shopping template in its raw form when bought. Note the blank title and menu items.
	The same template after customization. Note the change of the search box into an email list signup box, the addition of the red text and the repetition of the gray rounded rectangle frames.

Customizing a template sounds difficult. What should I do?

Trust us: it really is easy. Anybody who can use a wordprocessing program could learn to go through the steps involved in customizing a template in a very short time - probably less than an hour.

Try it for yourself. Check out our template customization tutorials, where you can download a free sample template and quickly learn to edit it.

If, after following the tutorial you still have doubts, simply take a copy of your template after you download it and work on the copy, so that even if you do make a mistake that you can't undo (very unlikely), you can just abandon that copy, make another one, and try again! It shouldn't take too long to get it right.