Website Templates
Sometimes it may be easier to start and set up your website quickly with a professionally produced website template. Website templates are fairly inexpensive and can provide you with an immediate ‘look and feel’ for your website. One could spend hours and hours trying to create their own look and feel for a website but for many this could be simply a waste of time.
There are a number of places on the Internet that offer ‘free website templates’ for a number of industries: accounting, small business, online stores, ecommerce and more. These free templates are great if you are looking to put something quick and easy online, but they do have their limitations.
Free website templates are listed all over the Internet, but one should always be a bit cautious when using them!
Free Website Templates – What To Know
Many times website developers and designers will release a custom template that they have created to others online for free. This is great and all a big part of sharing in the online community.
Here are some limitations and items you should consider when deciding to use a free website template or design.
1. Will the author of the design require a link or credit back to their website? For more people this many not matter, but if you are concerned with who you are linking to, this is an item to review.
2. Is the template customizable. Sometimes the web page template may look great on the surface, but when you do give it to your website developer, will he/she be able to modify it, make adjustments to the design, change the logo and color scheme of the free site template for your business?
3. Is it up to current web standards. This is a big one. Many good looking free website templates look great on the surface, but in the source code, they may or may not be that friendly to the various browsers out there like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and others.
4. Is the source code ‘bloaty’ (excessive code) and does it utilize CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)? Bloaty code will take longer to load and make not be as fast as some of the current professional website templates.
