Using Website templates and other site design aids

A website template is a ready made webpage, including graphics and HTML, that can be customized with your own content and graphics etc. Since templates are available in a semi finished state, they can be used to create websites in very little time and for a lesser cost.

A website template usually comes with the following, an index.htm or Homepage, Font files, Graphic Files, Photoshop PSD files and CSS files. A template might include certain scripts to be used in the website, such as Javascript or DHTML. These will come with instructions on how to customize your website usually in a readme.txt file.

Customisation of the websites is fairly simple to do, even for a web novice. It basically involves opening the template files in either a text editor such as Notepad, this method would require some knowledge of HTML, or using a WYSIWYG editor such as MS Frontpage or Macromedia Dreamweaver. After opening the files, all one has to do is enter the content into the templates, the font size, colour, etc. are all fully customizable.

Editing the graphics would require some expertise in graphics software such as Adobe Photoshop. If your template comes with PSD files, these are to be opened in Photoshop and edited. It should be possible to edit the text in the graphic, change colours, edit layers etc. These modified files can then be saved as either JPG or GIF file and then used on the webpage

Editing the layouts and styles in a template would involve modifying a CSS style sheet. A CSS style sheets allows you to change text colour, headings, links etc. in multiple pages by just modifying a single page. This is extremely convenient especially if a website uses many pages. This file can easily be modified in a text editor or any WYSIWYG editor. Therefore, it is necessary to receive such a CSS file from your template vendor.

An important aspect of eploying web templates is ownership rights. It is possible to receive both exclusive and non-exclusive rights to a web template. You might want to purchase exclusive rights if you don’t want anyone or any other business to use the template you are using. A non-exclusive ownership means other companies or individuals might use the same template for their websites.

There are many companies on the internet who sell website templates. It is important to know exactly what kind of a template one is looking for and to be aware of what template packages comprise of and if such packages suit your needs.

Other Webdesign aids

The internet offers an unlimited variety of website design aids that not only help in making a website look good but they also make working with various elements much faster and efficient.

Most of these web design aids are free and are easy to use. They can be in the form of Text or Image editors, Freebies such as Web counters, Guestbooks, Banner creation services, Animated Graphics, Search engine submission websites, Stock Photo galleries, Free fonts etc.

The following are some popular and useful tools and where you can find them online.

Royalty Free Clipart at www.clipart.com

Animated Graphics at www.bellsnwhistles.com

Free statistics at www.visitorlogs.com

Shareware and Utilities at www.softseek.com

Free forms for webpages at www.response-o-matic.com