Choosing the right Website Template

  Website Templates
Looking to establish an online presence? Then, your most affordable solution is to buy a web template. It is important to determine what kind of templates are there in the market before you proceed to but one. The following is a brief explanation of the most popular templates that you expect to find on the market analyzing the degree of expertise to develop them, the required tools and their functionality.


Flash Templates
Flash is a registered trademark of macromedia studios. Flash has really modified the way that web pages look. It has allowed for movement and interactivity on previously very static and boring websites. It has its advantages and disadvantages like everything. Flash Templates bring alive every website allowing visitors to sometimes interact with the web page that they are visiting. However, they are not very useful from the search engine optimization standpoint. Search engines can not read flash movies. Therefore, a flash website, built entirely in flash, can not be optimized for key terms, so users can find you. Then, you have websites that have a flash introduction and or a flash heading. This websites provide users with the flashing and whistles that some website owners are looking for, and allow you to somehow optimize the pages making them friendlier for search engines like yahoo and google. Flash can be downloaded from the macromedia site with a test license for thirty days.
Dreamweaver Templates
Dreamweaver is another gem of macromedia. It is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) html editor which means that you do not need to know HTML to create pages. HTML is the standard protocol or language that most pages are created on the internet today. Dreamweaver templates allow you to speed the production of a website, and it also allows you, one your website is established, to modify all pages but just modifying the templates. You will only have to add the content to it. Of course, you will need dreamweaver software, which can also be downloaded from the macromedia site with a 30 day test license, and some knowledge of how it works. There are plenty of tutorials to learn dreamweaver, and even macromedia distributes it with a good but rough tutorial.
Frontpage Templates
Just like macromedia templates, frontpage templates speed the process of creating a website with multiple templates. Frontpage templates are more like a theme as you can apply it to existing pages and not use the template to create them. Frontpage is created by the Microsoft Corporation and is distributed with office package. You will need frontage to edit the templates.
PSD Templates
PSD files are the ones created by photoshop from adobe. Photoshop is one of the leading picture editing software on the market. Although PSD templates are very easy to modify, you will need extensive knowledge of what photoshop is capable and its commands. Usually, PSD templates include only one master file that you work with to produce many different web pages, and you will need to modify some graphics in order to alter the template to your need. PSD templates provide you with a great finished product that will look good on any browser. Photoshop, from adobe, is defiantly a require tool.
Fireworks Templates
As PSD templates, fireworks templates are made to work with an image editing software. The export capacity of fireworks allows you to have crispy clean layouts for your website. You will need, of course, fireworks from macromedia to modify them although you can get away with photoshop.
Full site template
Full site templates are templates that are sold with the most common pages already created. Your customizing is reduced to the minimum. Usually, you will receive a set of files, images, and some scripts, depending on the template and the provider. You will also need a HTML editor such as dreamweaver or frontpage to work with them. Full site templates are a little be more costly than other types of templates depending on the design, but it allow you to reduce creating pages and modifying images.
Ecommerce Templates
Ecommerce templates are templates that have a shopping cart with payment processors already incorporated, also depending on the provider and the template. It is a great solution to small to medium size companies that are looking to sell their products on the net. These templates are usually customizable with frontpage or dreamweaver, and you will only need to add your company information and the products. There is also a free ecommerce solution called Oscommerce. OsCommerce is an online shop free under the open source license and it works with a template system or theme. It features multilanguage options, and different payment gateaways. It is written in PHP, and works with most hosting services. The only conflict with Oscommerce is that every shop that uses it looks about the same. You will need to purchase an customized Oscommerce theme in order to obtain some uniqueness. There is minimal to non modification of the template once you implement it.
CSS Templates
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet. It is a regular template ruled by an external file that has the colors, font sizes, font styles, and other information about the look of your website. It is especially useful when modifying the looks of a multi page website. If you are thinking on building a large website and changing the look if it when you want it, this is one of your best choice. The CSS file is editable with a text editor. You basically define the set of rules by what the website pages are governed.
Flash Intro Templates
Flash intro templates are templates that present a movie to visitors before they go into the detail pages of your website. Flash intro templates tantalize users with motion and information about your company. For some users, the flash intro is a turn off, and they skip the website which is the content that you want them to see since the intros usually takes time to load and finish. For some other users, flash intros amaze them. There is not between. Webmaster are also divided by the use of flash intros. In order to modify flash intros, you will need flash and a HTML editor.
Phpnuke Themes
Phpnuke is also another open source project that is free to the public. It can be a portal of information, or anything that you want. It works through modules, and presents the information in “boxes”. There is a lot of add on features that you can easily include to a phpnuke website. It is better that you visit www.phpnuke.org in order to learn what you can do with it. Also as Oscommerce, it works with a theme or template system where you only select the theme that you would like to set your site, and it changes the whole look of the site at the push of a bottom. Themes for phpnuke need little to non modification. The very little modification that you need is done with image editng software such as photoshop of fireworks.
Forum Templates
Whether you are looking to set up a forum or have an established forum, you need an appealing look to your users and subscribers. We have the forum templates that you are looking for. You can select from flash headers or regular forum templates. Our forum templates work with most popular open source forums such as PhpBB. They will include all required files to put it into the template system of your site. Our forum templates are of great quality and design.

About the author:
Nelson Bort, BA in Business administration - Internet Marketing, http://www.studiotemplates.com

 Nelson Bort

More Articles 

The Wonders of Content Management Systems - Halstatt Pires
As you get serious about your web site, your time will become invaluable. A content management system is the best way to maximize your efforts What A Content Management System Does for You A good CMS system will allow you to update can entire...

Size Matters, It's True what they say! - Steven Gardner
Yes, it really does and the smaller your webpage the better it is. Size is an area where people can lose focus when they are concentrating on the look and branding of their website. In print and other forms of media, size and complexity...

Starting Cascading Style Sheets - stephen cope
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are being used more and more by web designers to layout and format web pages. Although they have been around for several years now many designers have avoided them due to browser incompatibility. Although...

Page Structure: Headings and Lists - Lee Asher
When HTML started, people put all sorts of things on their pages: there was a tag to say which font you wanted your text to be in, a tag to say you wanted it to be in the centre of the page, and so on. Now, though, that way of writing pages...

Gain an edge by viewing your competitors source code - Burke Ferguson
Doing business online is alot like the brick and mortar business is, but with alot less steps and hassles,... well kinda anyways. Now there are quite a few advantages to an online business vs a brick and mortar business; like we don't commute,...

Creating Custom Error Pages with .htaccess - Eric Reif
Have you ever noticed that some people have really nice error pages when a page doesn't exist on their site? Wouldn't it be nice if you could make your error page match the rest of your site? Don't fret; you can do it! All you'll need to do is...

Can Your Web Site Win The Tour De France? - Ken Hablow
It's over. After three grueling weeks of racing, Lance Armstrong has won what some call the world's most difficult sporting event, the Tour De France. The US newspapers gave the event a cursory notation the Monday after the finish and showed a...

The Basics of Web Forms - Lee Asher
Whenever you want people to enter data and send it to you, you need a web form. Whether the data is as simple as a username and password or as complicated as a full address form, the basic principles remain the same. The Tags Form tags...

The bread and butter of website accessibility - Benjamin Briggs
The main reason webmasters fail to make their websites accessible is because they don't understand the concept of an "accessible website" in the first place. Lets admit it, when the buzzword accessibility flies about over the web most of us...

HTML Encryption Utility - HTML Encryption Utility Free Download
please now visit www.htmlblock.co.uk for html encryption thank you. --------------------------------------- If you have sensitive information on your website that is subject to unauthorized use, you need to encrypt it! For your convenience, we...

W3C Compliance & Macromedia Flash - Galina Arlov
A Creative Solution to Validate Pages Containing Macromedia Flash and Work Around XHTML Specifications for Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Remember the "Good Housekeeping Seal?" W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium seal of quality...

Web Standards Part 1 : What are web standards? - Gary Moyle
There is a lot of talk about web standards within the web community but to business owners talk of web standards is like double-dutch. This article will give the low down on what these technologies are and how they relate to your web business. When...