Custom Website Design Vs. Template Vs. Build Your own via Software

Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of three different types of paths you could take to get a website up and running for your business. The first one we are going to look at is Custom Website Designs (Example: Tulsa Website Design) ]]> http://edezigns.com/2010/08/15/custom-website-design-vs-template-vs-build-your-own-via-software/feed/ 23 http://edezigns.com/2010/07/23/flash-website-template/ http://edezigns.com/2010/07/23/flash-website-template/#comments Sat, 24 Jul 2010 03:56:19 +0000 admin http://edezigns.com/2010/07/23/flash-website-template/
Do you want to use the free flash website templates to make a cool website, all of them are totally free on www.freeflashweb.blogspot.com download any of you like and use this tutorial to make it yours.!!! More templates will be post soon!!!

You set everything up once, and then you use that webpage template as the basis for every page on your site. All you have to do is plug your content, page title and so on into the template and save it with an appropriate filename. Then use the template again for your next page.

There are different ways to make a web template though, and lots of conflicting advice.

You can code directly in HTML, or you can use a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) software program. You can lay out your pages using tables, or you can use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). You can use the default styling, style everything with HTML, or use CSS for styling. You can paste your navigation bar and footer into each page, or build them in separate files and use includes or programming to integrate them seamlessly into your pages.

For the average person who’s new to websites, using a wysiwyg program with tables for the layout makes the project feasible. But you’ll read that tables are not cool anymore and wysiwyg programs are flawed and produce bad code.

So what is a newbie website builder to do? What is the best way for you to make a website template?

If you’re building one or two websites for yourself I believe you really don’t need to know everything a professional programmer knows. You can build a hugely successful website with a wysiwyg program using tables for the layout.

There are some “must haves” though. You must be able to update your navigation bar easily. You must be able to update the styling easily. You must be able to update your footer easily if you have one. And it makes sense to be able to easily add an advertisement or notice on every page of your website.

Having to do those things a page at a time is no joke with a ten page website, and a special form of torture with a hundred page website.

To make life easier you can use an include file (called a virtual include or server side include) to update pages easily. It’s a separate file that you put content into. Then you link to it on your web pages so that it is automatically included in those pages when someone looks at them on the internet. You should have one each for your navigation bar and your footer, maybe one for your header, and it can be nice to have one that can be used for that site-wide ad. If you wanted to put “5 day sale, 25% off everything” on every page of your site, an include file makes it easy.

Using style sheets makes changing page styles easy. You may not think that’s so important, but wait until you’re 50 pages into your website and you suddenly think “Oh my goodness, what have I done? Those red headlines look so 1995″, or “I didn’t realize visitors couldn’t read those fonts very well!”

A style sheet is a separate file that contains all the instructions for the styling for your website. If you want to make a change you just change one file and that will update every page on your website. It takes minutes to change styles rather than days.

You can specify different styles for different headlines. Body text can be different to the headlines. Colors and the text size of the navbar can be totally different to the body text. You can set page colors, table colors, you can even put a border around your pages if you want to. If you decide you don’t like the styling it’s easy to change.

Even the navbar can be built using style sheets and tables. You don’t have to have fancy flyout menus or beautifully crafted buttons. A simple text based navbar is quite adequate, and still used by thousands of websites. You can make them quite nice looking too.

And using a wysiwyg program to make a website template is really not so bad. They may not produce perfect coding, but that won’t cause your website to fail. You’re much better off using the wysiwyg program and investing the time you save into learning what really does cause 95% of websites to fail, and what you can do to make yours a wild success.

Website templates are very affordable and they save you a lot of effort and time when you want to create a new layout for your website. However, a lot of people make mistakes in the process of choosing and using a web template and end up with something that was unlike the image they had in mind. Here are some guidelines to help you avoid those mistakes.

The first obvious mistake you should be aware of is using a template that is very popular. If many people use the same template, your website will not appear unique at all and your credibility as a solid, different website will be tarnished. In other words, you will appear generic just like your next-door neighbors.

The whole point of using a web template is to save time and effort. You just change the title and appropriate details and you’re done. The biggest mistake one makes is to customize the template beyond recognition. While that may be good in the sense that you’re creating a unique graphic, you’re defying the very purpose of using a web template — saving time and effort.

However, on the opposite side, if a template you purchase is suitable but some changes must be made to suit your site’s theme, then you will have to take some time to make the changes. For example, you can find a very nice template that suits your hobby site except the original designer has put an image of stamps in the header. You can find images of garden plants and spades to replace the stamps for your gardening hobby site. However, do only make the necessary changes and don’t redesign the whole template.

In some circumstances, some people simply make the wrong choice of templates. This is a very subjective issue but you have to be careful in selecting templates to suit your audience. Do not choose templates just because they are pretty, choose them because they serve your purpose.