What Exactly is a Template Anyway?

A template is a finished web site design that you can personalize with your own text, features and graphics.

The truth is that successful websites all have a similar underlying design structure and features. They only look different.

A web site template gives you the underlying design and structure with a ready-to-go color scheme and graphics. Most of them can be customized, which changes only their outward appearance.

As an example, the four web sites below are built from the same design template. They share the same basic design structure.

What makes them look different and unique is their color scheme,
images and content:

Personalizing:

A template usually contains sample text and images so you can see what it will look like in its finished form. When you personalize, you remove the samples and replace it with your own content.

This not the same as customizing a template, which changes the appearance of the web site design.

When you customize, you are changing its overall appearance. When you personalize, you are simply adding your own content.

Types of Templates:

Templates can be acquired as limited editions, non-exclusive templates, exclusive templates and system-only.

• Non-Exclusive: There are no restrictions on how many of these templates are sold. Most non-exclusive templates can be fully customized so even though they start out looking the same, they are completely unique in appearance once they've been customized.

• Limited Edition: A restricted number of these templates are sold, usually 10 to 20 copies. When the template reaches its limit of sales, it is removed from inventory.

• Exclusive: An exclusive template is sold to only one buyer. When it is sold it is removed from inventory. These templates are much more expensive than the other templates.

• System-Only: These templates are not available outside of the system they belong to. You must buy the system the template belongs to if you want to purchase the template. A good example of this is on Yahoo's site building system. The template comes with your Yahoo site. When you leave to host your site somewhere else, you can't take the template with you.

Customizing Templates:

When you are looking at using templates, be sure to check on their level of customization. This will depend on the type of template as well as the design of the template itself.

Downloadable Templates

Unless a template is a system-only template, you will have to download the template to your own computer and make your changes to it with your own web page editor. These are the different levels of customization:

• Open Design: Open design templates are very easy to change and can be fully customized to any color scheme. Changing the images, backgrounds and graphics is a snap. Just take out the ones that are there and put your own in place of them.

  See a Demonstration of Open Design Templates

• Limited Design:These templates usually come with graphics files for the buttons and logo. You edit them in your graphics editor to customize the template for your website. You can also change the color schemes and images on these templates but you will need to be proficient with graphics editing software. On the plus side, these templates are usually very nicely designed. If you really like one of these templates and you don't mind spending a bit of money, you can hire a professional graphics designer to get the exact look and feel you want for your site. This is less expensive than having the site designed from scratch - all you pay for is the customization of the graphics.

• Fixed Design: A fixed design has images and graphics fully embedded in it. These are usually very beautiful, very professional looking templates. They can only be customized by a pro graphics designer. Unless you really like the template and its design and color scheme or you can afford the costs of customizing it to your specifications, you might want to pass on this type of template. It may actually be easier and lesss costly to hire a pro website designer to build you a similar looking template of your own that is exclusively yours. However, if you like the web design template and it works for what you want on your site, these templates can put you on a fast-track to getting your website going with a really professional look and feel.

Template Shop:

Visit our template shop, and browse the hundreds of web site templates that are available either as individual purchases or through a cost saving membership subscription that allows unlimited template downloads for a very reasonable annual fee.

Browse the Template Shop