Forum Moderators: open
An afternoon's searching brought up only a few really good templates. Every "free" template I could find was pretty old.
Someone mentioned in another forum that "most professionals use templates". OK, where do they get them? Or are they coded in-house and re-used?
Is there an equivilent to, say, "Eyewire.com" but for web site templates?
Thanks
I use templates on rare occassions, and they're all done in house. If you have years of hand-coding experience, it would be a good idea to make your own. You'll know the ins-and-outs of the code.
I've seen site templates offered by other webdev services, and I found that they were poorly coded. Trust your own.
It works for me ;)
As already said, if coding is your thing you would be better off doing them yourself, spending a few days making a decent template can save a LOT of work in the future.
Dazz
I did find one place that was pretty decent, though I haven't purchased anything from it yet(and I'm NOT listing it as a plug or anything, just for comparsion value):
www.thetemplatestore.com
I mean, some of their commerce templates seemed a bit busy but pretty decent for $15 to $30... that's 15 min. to 30 min. billed designing time.
Of course, that particular place lists a lot of Dreamweaver-based templates, and we're using ColdFusion Studio for everything now - so I don't know 100% that we could get away with that.
Any thoughts?
If you've been hand-coding for years it should take you less time than searching right?
Nick
You can make templates with FP. Granted, you'll see people cursing FP in here, but at the end of the day, you are the person responsible for deciding what code it makes :)
Since youre used to FP, you no doubt work your way around it pretty fast. I would switch to DW if it didnt mean having to learn the layout (and work slower)...but anyways...
You can save templates in frontpage. Since you will wish to have the template best to your needs, it goes without saying that someone elses templates will unlikely fit the bill :)
Since youve been using it on a scale of years...all that code that you write again and again (perhaps for the same site) could be shoved into a template for later use.
Its more or less what I do. Copy and paste a bit template code, add some includes, put the unique content in and put the right keywords in the title etc.
Thats just with Frontpage too.
Great thing "templates"...or..the CTRL C and V buttons really :)
Bro of Lan: I admit, I tried FrontPage way back in '98, and the templates that came with it were pretty awful - but the code it spit out was even worse (IMHO). I haven't given it a second thought since, and I suppose that also means I haven't given it a fair shake since then. I'm sure its easier to use now, and the templates more professional.
For all those who mentioned having the years of code behind me: Sure I do. But general site design, and even my own sense of design has improved quite a bit since then! So I'm not really re-using code that way, other than the most basic stuff.
Nick - you're absolutely right about me being able to bang out tables in about as long as it takes to write this message. But what makes a "professional" design is often the small details - borders around tables that work in all browsers, curved graphics, maybe mouseovers or dynamic stuff... that stuff seems to take me a lot a time.
I just thought there might be a way to use a few well-made templates to give some top-notch design to all the really small clients out there who still need web sites.
Thanks for all your help and thoughts gang
