Site Design Templates?

[crazyfangear]

Hello All,

Being a newbie to this site, I wanted to get opinions on site templates. I am currently converting a former sports merchandise catalog type website to a similar website through an affiliate.

I had a good looking website, and learned a lot about SEO during that excursion. However, I was using Yahoo Merchant and the RTML system they have. I can design a site that looks the same, as I have HTML and IT systems knowledge, but I have never really worked with CSS (cascading style sheets). So to make my site look like it did before, with my knowledge, would take a lot of work recreating each team page.

I was wondering if anyone uses some of the templates from the templates sites, and do you consider them effective, or do they look to similar to other sites? Also, I've never used a template, how easy are they to insyall/implement as well as make personal touch type changes to?

Thanks,

[Rosalind Gardner]

Hey Troy,

I really like BoxedArt. They have beautiful templates, but their templates are fairly complex.

If you take a look at Sage-Hearts.com you'll see a template that I picked up at BoxedArt and then torn apart and reconfigured.

As for CSS... it is well worth investing some time to either learn it, or have a designer at Elance create a new one, or modify the existing template for you. I've had them work on a few of my css templates and it's always cheap as borscht and the work is done quickly.

Hope that helps!

Cheers,
Ros

[PoochMike]

Hey Troy,

There is no question you will have to learn CSS at some point. I found that www.lynda.com provides professional training for CSS, Dreamweaver, etc etc for only $25/month. I took all the CSS and Dreamweaver Courses, subscribed to a few CSS Guru Newswletters and spent a fair bit of time on www.AListApart.com.

A month later, I can honestly say, I am CSS conversant. Now if you want quick and painless, the template pages are a way to go but any style changes that are required will usually be in the CSS style sheets. You will be able to change the label text of things, but not really have control of the site contents until you get some CSS under your belt.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

[crazyfangear]

Thanks All,

I know some things about CSS. I have a programming background, so I can go on a style sheet and make changes to the styles. I have done this before. I really have never tried to create a style sheet from scratch. I thought if I used a template using a style sheet, then I'd be able to make the desired changes.

However, any knowledge is beneficial, so I appreciate the direction to the training information.

[larrylef]

Hi, crazyfangear,

I've used many, many templates over the years. They're kind of like people - some look great and are easy to work with. Some look great, and are horrible to work with. And, inevitably, some look horrible and are horrible to work with

Roz mentioned Box Art, and I have had decent luck with a couple from that company, though as she mentioned, the one's I worked with were fairly complex table-based affairs. Here is a site I put together with one of their templates; http://homequalitymanagement.com/.

I've seen many templates that are visually attractive but are a nightmare to work with - possibly designed by a former print designer with superb design skills but very little skill understanding the quirks and constraints of the we.

Lately, I've been tending toward either creating my own CSS based designs (my website, under my signature, is all css designed from scratch), or using css based templates.

I'm very partial to templates from http://www.projectseven.com, which are CSS based and cross-browser tested. Very high quality stuff. They also have some of the best menu systems and other site building tools, but you'll need Dreamweaver to use them. They even sell a couple of CSS templates with a full teaching manual which amounts to a hands on course in CSS.