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Casual Articles - Custom Web Site Design or Website Templates - The Big Debate
As businesses grow and expand, it is often the case that some huge potential cost savings are often ignored - or simply left unaddressed. This is often the case when additional personnel are brought in to cope with expanding daily project management, marketing or administrative needs. Typically in these environments, work groups are created and with them, an expanding set of computer workstations and their associated printer devices. This of course is in addition to a growing requirement for photocopying and the creating of quality, hard copy, presentation materials.The problem of multiple printing devicesOver time I have found on average,
3. Sometimes the whole colour scheme can be changed by making use of tools such as Photoshop or Fireworks.
Secondly, the bad design elements of the template can be addressed in the following way:
After all the effort that I put into designing my websites from scratch I soon ran into the problem of maintenance. Successful websites need content. They need lots of content and they need content to be added in a constant stream. The only tool that can help you do this is some form of Content Management System.
There are several of these available commercially or under the GPL license; people have their own favourites. The point is that most Content Management Systems work on the principle of separating the content from the presentation, and therefore work on some sort of template system themselves.
The best solution therefore is to convert the commercial website template into the CMS template format. I often convert commercial website template
One of the best and easiest ways for someone to make large amounts of money is by selling air! Ok, maybe not literal air, but information. People are starving for information and they are willing to pull out their credit cards for it. Seriously!Millions of people go on the internet with the intent of finding one thing: information. Some are looking for ways to save money. Some are looking for ways to make money. Others may be looking for weight loss programs, diet information, information on hobbies, and just about anything you can think of.People want information today. Not tomorrow, not next week, today. Once they find what they are looking
Let's explore these.
Templates are not original
There is something to be said for creating your own, all original work. But there is a difference between being somewhat artistic and being an artist with the capability of bringing together all the elements of a website headers, judicious use of graphics, menus and layout into a cohesive and pleasing whole. Not to talk about creating a website with a definite wow factor and one that loads fast to boot.
I discovered soon in my website design career that I am just not quite artistic enough to really create the effect that I was looking for. My first websites were all created from scratch by hand and I spent hours and hours on choosing the right colours, selecting the graphics, optimizing the graphics and designing the menus with the right rollover effects.
The most frustrating thing was that after my masterpiece was designed, it still fell far short of some of the other websites that I regularly came across in my travels on the Internet.
Now, professionally designed website templates are, as the name implies, designed by professional graphic designers. They might not be professional website designers as such since these templates often have certain intrinsic flaws, however, most of the time the look and feel created by the template, especially its graphical elements, work together in a way that is difficult to achieve for someone without either years of practice or formal training (not to talk of intrinsic artistic capabilities and talent!)
But let's look at the second reason why people don't like templates:
Templates are often badly designed from a website design perspective
Website templates might look nice on the outside, but any experienced website designer will tell you that under the hood they suffer from the following problems:
1. In most cases they do not make use of Cascading Style Sheets to control layout, fonts or colours. Some of them nominally make use of an external css file but most of the times style commands abound inside the html code, often negating the benefit of the external style sheet.
2. Probably the biggest problem and biggest bugbear of web design purists is that most of these templates are heavily tables based. While tables undeniably make it easy to quickly position text and graphics it does go against the grain of good website design. Tables are supposed to contain content, not website design elements.
3. The last big problem is that they are rigid. Often a content block is a specific size and if your content does not fit into that, it is your problem! Because the content and the presentation are not separated it is very easy to break the template if you want to make extensive changes to your website content.
So how can these persuasive negatives related to the use of templates be overcome?
Firstly, the fact that there might be another site out there somewhere that might have the same look should not really be a deterrent. There are over 8 billion pages on the Internet, according to Google. Admittedly there are fewer websites than pages but even at 16 pages on average per website, we might have close on 500 Million possible websites. What are the chances? But there are things that can be done to minimise the screaming template effect:
1. The stock photos and graphics used on the template can often be replaced by photos of the company or person that the website is being designed for. Even just using other stock photos or graphics can make a big difference.
2. Company logos can be incorporated into relevant places
3. Sometimes the whole colour scheme can be changed by making use of tools such as Photoshop or Fireworks.
Secondly, the bad design elements of the template can be addressed in the following way:
After all the effort that I put into designing my websites from scratch I soon ran into the problem of maintenance. Successful websites need content. They need lots of content and they need content to be added in a constant stream. The only tool that can help you do this is some form of Content Management System.
There are several of these available commercially or under the GPL license; people have their own favourites. The point is that most Content Management Systems work on the principle of separating the content from the presentation, and therefore work on some sort of template system themselves.
The best solution therefore is to convert the commercial website template into the CMS template format. I often convert commercial website templates
When it came time this year to order reprints for our paper books on Turkish language-learning -- we hesitated, took a look at technology developments, and decided in favor of ebook publications.The reason we did so is due to the particular advantage provided by the Adobe PDF format when used with Adobe Acrobat's simple but oh-so-effective text search capability.And, if you're concerned because you think that you can only access eBook files on full-sized computers -- which fail 'the portability test' -- then think again. Because there are quite a few handheld
The most frustrating thing was that after my masterpiece was designed, it still fell far short of some of the other websites that I regularly came across in my travels on the Internet.
Now, professionally designed website templates are, as the name implies, designed by professional graphic designers. They might not be professional website designers as such since these templates often have certain intrinsic flaws, however, most of the time the look and feel created by the template, especially its graphical elements, work together in a way that is difficult to achieve for someone without either years of practice or formal training (not to talk of intrinsic artistic capabilities and talent!)
But let's look at the second reason why people don't like templates:
Templates are often badly designed from a website design perspective
Website templates might look nice on the outside, but any experienced website designer will tell you that under the hood they suffer from the following problems:
1. In most cases they do not make use of Cascading Style Sheets to control layout, fonts or colours. Some of them nominally make use of an external css file but most of the times style commands abound inside the html code, often negating the benefit of the external style sheet.
2. Probably the biggest problem and biggest bugbear of web design purists is that most of these templates are heavily tables based. While tables undeniably make it easy to quickly position text and graphics it does go against the grain of good website design. Tables are supposed to contain content, not website design elements.
3. The last big problem is that they are rigid. Often a content block is a specific size and if your content does not fit into that, it is your problem! Because the content and the presentation are not separated it is very easy to break the template if you want to make extensive changes to your website content.
So how can these persuasive negatives related to the use of templates be overcome?
Firstly, the fact that there might be another site out there somewhere that might have the same look should not really be a deterrent. There are over 8 billion pages on the Internet, according to Google. Admittedly there are fewer websites than pages but even at 16 pages on average per website, we might have close on 500 Million possible websites. What are the chances? But there are things that can be done to minimise the screaming template effect:
1. The stock photos and graphics used on the template can often be replaced by photos of the company or person that the website is being designed for. Even just using other stock photos or graphics can make a big difference.
2. Company logos can be incorporated into relevant places
3. Sometimes the whole colour scheme can be changed by making use of tools such as Photoshop or Fireworks.
Secondly, the bad design elements of the template can be addressed in the following way:
After all the effort that I put into designing my websites from scratch I soon ran into the problem of maintenance. Successful websites need content. They need lots of content and they need content to be added in a constant stream. The only tool that can help you do this is some form of Content Management System.
There are several of these available commercially or under the GPL license; people have their own favourites. The point is that most Content Management Systems work on the principle of separating the content from the presentation, and therefore work on some sort of template system themselves.
The best solution therefore is to convert the commercial website template into the CMS template format. I often convert commercial website template
1. Capital Required: The most important point before starting any new business is the amount of Capital required. We may calculate the amount of capital required first. It includes the Building Cost, Machinery Cost, Furniture and Fixture Cost, Electrical Fitting Cost.Also we should calculate the cost required for running the business like cost of raw material, staff salary and other various financial overheads and expenses.After, calculating the Capital, we may approach for a Loan from any bank or financial institution. Different banks provide loans and credit facilities at different interest rates, so we should try to figure out what is the best deal fo
Website templates might look nice on the outside, but any experienced website designer will tell you that under the hood they suffer from the following problems:
1. In most cases they do not make use of Cascading Style Sheets to control layout, fonts or colours. Some of them nominally make use of an external css file but most of the times style commands abound inside the html code, often negating the benefit of the external style sheet.
2. Probably the biggest problem and biggest bugbear of web design purists is that most of these templates are heavily tables based. While tables undeniably make it easy to quickly position text and graphics it does go against the grain of good website design. Tables are supposed to contain content, not website design elements.
3. The last big problem is that they are rigid. Often a content block is a specific size and if your content does not fit into that, it is your problem! Because the content and the presentation are not separated it is very easy to break the template if you want to make extensive changes to your website content.
So how can these persuasive negatives related to the use of templates be overcome?
Firstly, the fact that there might be another site out there somewhere that might have the same look should not really be a deterrent. There are over 8 billion pages on the Internet, according to Google. Admittedly there are fewer websites than pages but even at 16 pages on average per website, we might have close on 500 Million possible websites. What are the chances? But there are things that can be done to minimise the screaming template effect:
1. The stock photos and graphics used on the template can often be replaced by photos of the company or person that the website is being designed for. Even just using other stock photos or graphics can make a big difference.
2. Company logos can be incorporated into relevant places
3. Sometimes the whole colour scheme can be changed by making use of tools such as Photoshop or Fireworks.
Secondly, the bad design elements of the template can be addressed in the following way:
After all the effort that I put into designing my websites from scratch I soon ran into the problem of maintenance. Successful websites need content. They need lots of content and they need content to be added in a constant stream. The only tool that can help you do this is some form of Content Management System.
There are several of these available commercially or under the GPL license; people have their own favourites. The point is that most Content Management Systems work on the principle of separating the content from the presentation, and therefore work on some sort of template system themselves.
The best solution therefore is to convert the commercial website template into the CMS template format. I often convert commercial website template
Following is a brief definition of core competencies and competitive advantage and their fit with creativity and innovation management.Core Competence:A core competence is one which critically underpins the organisation's competitive advantage. Companies can differentiate themselves from their competitors with specific core competencies, but often not for long. The differentiation is difficult to sustain and can often be imitated by competitors.The integration (and attainment) of constituent skills that is the distinguishing mark of a core competence, is achieved and sustained through developing strong dynamic capabilities, particularly in a world o
So how can these persuasive negatives related to the use of templates be overcome?
Firstly, the fact that there might be another site out there somewhere that might have the same look should not really be a deterrent. There are over 8 billion pages on the Internet, according to Google. Admittedly there are fewer websites than pages but even at 16 pages on average per website, we might have close on 500 Million possible websites. What are the chances? But there are things that can be done to minimise the screaming template effect:
1. The stock photos and graphics used on the template can often be replaced by photos of the company or person that the website is being designed for. Even just using other stock photos or graphics can make a big difference.
2. Company logos can be incorporated into relevant places
3. Sometimes the whole colour scheme can be changed by making use of tools such as Photoshop or Fireworks.
Secondly, the bad design elements of the template can be addressed in the following way:
After all the effort that I put into designing my websites from scratch I soon ran into the problem of maintenance. Successful websites need content. They need lots of content and they need content to be added in a constant stream. The only tool that can help you do this is some form of Content Management System.
There are several of these available commercially or under the GPL license; people have their own favourites. The point is that most Content Management Systems work on the principle of separating the content from the presentation, and therefore work on some sort of template system themselves.
The best solution therefore is to convert the commercial website template into the CMS template format. I often convert commercial website template
If you're a small business owner, you may not want to invest thousands of dollars in billboard advertising. That doesn't mean, however, that you can't take advantage of outdoor advertising methods in promoting your business.One common outdoor advertising that any business can use is vehicle advertisements. If your company owns a delivery truck or any company vehicle, invest the money in making the vehicle a driving advertisement. Don't just paint your company name and phone number on it, either. Treat your vehicle as you would any other advertisement – use a catchy headline, offer benefits, and use a call to action.You can also use your personal vehicle f
3. Sometimes the whole colour scheme can be changed by making use of tools such as Photoshop or Fireworks.
Secondly, the bad design elements of the template can be addressed in the following way:
After all the effort that I put into designing my websites from scratch I soon ran into the problem of maintenance. Successful websites need content. They need lots of content and they need content to be added in a constant stream. The only tool that can help you do this is some form of Content Management System.
There are several of these available commercially or under the GPL license; people have their own favourites. The point is that most Content Management Systems work on the principle of separating the content from the presentation, and therefore work on some sort of template system themselves.
The best solution therefore is to convert the commercial website template into the CMS template format. I often convert commercial website templates, after suitable modifications to the graphics to personalise it, into my favourite CMS Joomla's, template format. During the process I retain the graphics but move all the styling into an external style sheet; I get rid of the tables and make use of CSS positioning. And because you are using a CMS you can easily add menus, new pages and all the other bits and pieces of content that you want without breaking the layout.
As far as I am concerned, the best of both worlds....
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