Using Templates for Web Design
When you’re just starting out in web design, two of the big challenges you face are:
- Putting together an attractive graphic design, and
- Using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for layout and formatting
Creating graphics can be extremely time consuming and then you have to figure out how to add your text and content images without “breaking” your graphic layout.
Using plain HTML to format each page element leads to code-heavy pages and a lack of consistency throughout your site. You end up repeating text formatting and other commands or creating layers of nested tables to contain your text and graphic elements when a bit of CSS would reduce your page code by nearly 1/2.
And that’s where web design templates can come to the rescue. If you can find a template whose overall layout and colors suit your application, you can save yourself days or weeks of design time and end up with a better looking site with more efficient code. Then your job becomes focusing on your content; and that, after all is the most important part of your site.
Considerations in choosing a web design template
Choosing a web design template requires a bit of prior planning. You should have a good idea of what content you want to include on the site:
- How many images will be in your pages?
- Will you have long sections of text or will your pages be shorter?
- Do you want to include highlight boxes that lead visitors deeper into your site?
- Will you be including sponsored ads on your pages? Where do you want them to appear?
- Will you include product images or ecommerce on your site?
- Will your visitors/customers be downloading digital files (music, videos, software or ebooks) from your site?
- Will you be including RSS feeds in your site?
Once you’ve answered questions like these, you’re ready to search for a template that will accommodate your content.
What to look for in a web design template
Beyond the obvious visual design elements in a template, you should look for the following characteristics:
- The template you choose should include the source files for the graphics – This means that you will get the “layered” graphics (in .psd or .png format) that you can edit to fit your site
- It should include a CSS stylesheet – This means that your headings, text and other elements will be pre-formatted. If you need to make adjustments it’s much easier to edit a style sheet than it is to create one from scratch if you don’t really understand CSS
- The design should be limited – The company offering the design should limit the number of times each design can be sold. After that number of downloads the design should be “retired” so that the design does not become ubiquitous.
- The template should be standards compliant – Look for a W3C compliant logo.
- My STRONG recommendation would be to avoid all-Flash templates or site designs – there are a number of reasons for this that will be addressed in another article.
With some pre-planning you can find a web design template to be your best friend. It can save you lots of time in the design process and will give you a consistent look and feel throughout your web site. It also helps you stay organized in your site development and often will include page elements like Contact Us forms, search forms, image galleries, shopping pages, RSS feeds and much more that will make your development process go smoother.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment