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By Jennifer Kyrnin, About.com Guide to Web Design / HTML since 1997

Poll: Do you use Web templates?

Thursday January 8, 2009

Web templates are a great way to get a website up quickly. But I always wonder if by using a template I'm dooming the site to look the same as some other site. So even when I have used templates, I've ended up tweaking them as much as if I hadn't used the template in the first place. These days I tend to use templates I've created myself - they act more like frameworks than templates. I use wireframe templates to get the basic structure of a site (2-columns header footer, etc.) and then build the site design inside that. That way the site will truly be unique, but I'm still getting some benefit from using a template. Do you use Web templates?

Comments

January 8, 2009 at 8:26 am
(1) Maine_iac says:

I don’t use templates or frameworks. Every time I make a new site, I build it from scratch. Coding is the part that is the most fun for me so I enjoy making a new code each time. :-)

January 8, 2009 at 10:58 am
(2) Psynister says:

I’ll second that. I don’t care for taking shortcuts across the things I enjoy doing, so I don’t bother using templates. If the person I’m making the site for wanted templates used, they probably could have built the site themselves.

January 9, 2009 at 8:15 am
(3) Wenny Fest says:

Well, actually I’m not a constant templates user. But I like to look through the collections of templates to get some fresh ideas from them. For example, my favourite ones are at FlashMint – I like to draw inspiration from their premium flash templates.

January 9, 2009 at 2:43 pm
(4) Online eBook Download says:

yes, still using some templates, just change the images/text.. and there you have it..

January 13, 2009 at 5:08 pm
(5) Guy Porter says:

I’d LOVE to use a template, esp the ones from Template Monster. But I have no idea how to customize them. I’ve even bought a few and gave up in frustration.

I switched to Joomla and now have something acceptable. But I still browse tempalte monster for the really cool new designs they have. I suppose I have “design envy.”

January 13, 2009 at 5:36 pm
(6) Cindy Sue Causey says:

If I was in a court of law, I’d probably be manipulatively drilled until, in tears, I blurted out, “YES, I use a template..!”

But it’s more that I basically just put things in the same general area while coding from scratch using something like Wordpad (up until the last couple of weeks, that is)..

Even the best intentioned WYSIWYG is for some reason cognitively incomprehensible for me.. My brain has to see things being built from the ground up.. It’s almost as though the pre-existing parts of a template are an undue distraction or something while I’m trying to work on the others..

Who knows.. Just how this particular Mind happens to operate.. :grin:

January 13, 2009 at 7:11 pm
(7) Dave.E says:

I prefer to start from scratch each time.
Every site has a different feel, look and character about it.
Not many people I know want an ‘off the shelf’ site, but it depends what you want the site for.
There are some extremely good templates available, and it would be fair to say that I have been given a few idea’s to work from because of templates.
in a nutshell, it’s horses for courses.

February 3, 2009 at 12:45 pm
(8) Neill says:

As a student of code and as web master (On job learning) of a couple of civic and hobby groups I have to try one I like, tweek it some, and try and learn what is in it and how it was made.

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