Using Templates

[RedHerself]

I hope this is the right forum to put this in

I have some very basic newbie questions about using templates.

How "customizable" are they? Obviously pictures and text. But what about links, affiliates, etc?

Do they come with just the one page you see or more?

Could you possibly use one for an e-commerce site?

and finally - the biggie:

What do you all think of using website templates - is it an ok way to start if you don't have a budget to hire someone?

[James]

Addressed in reverse order:

They're horribly coded over-complex over-flash-based trolls of designs.
But hey, if you're just starting and don't want to learn to do them yourself, they're good and appeal to most end-users because they're friendlyness; however, they often leave much to be desired in the way of organization.

They're used quite often for e-Commerce sites.

Templates are as customizable as you want them to be. You can change anything you want, especially if you've got Photoshop and Dreamweaver or basic HTML knowledge (guess there's nothing else, eh? It's a pretty simple language).

They'll usually just come with the one page, unless otherwise stated.

[Cutter]

Screw the templates, I've kept all of my advertising-revenue sites as simple as possible and they do a lot better than the first "fancy" one I did.

In fact, for one of my sites I decided to use a really wild design (and in my personal opinion, ugly.) That site was making over $100 a month the first month after launch.

Now, if you want to make an ecommerce to sell products this needs to be approached differently. Grab a copy of the book "Call to Action" off of Amazon (its like $10) and read that.

Once you have read that book you will be in a much better position to understand what you need to be successful selling online -- and that little $10 investment will save you a lot of headaches and money.

[Billyray]

I reckon templates are a great idea because it is too hard to be a guru in all areas of website publishing. I find that unless you code all the time you forget how you did things and have to re-learn them.

I've been looking for templates that are optimised for Adsense or other advertising banners and I can't find any suitable. All I'm looking for are simple designs with a masthead, a simple css menu, 3 columns and a footer with some decent finishing graphics.

[James]

it is too hard to be a guru in all areas of website publishing.

I call bull****.

I've been looking for templates that are optimised for Adsense or other advertising banners and I can't find any suitable. All I'm looking for are simple designs with a masthead, a simple css menu, 3 columns and a footer with some decent finishing graphics.

That's simple to make, man. Just do it yourself.

[paul]

"Nothing is as simple as something you understand or as difficult as something you don't."

James, I don't understand what you feel qualifies you to tell Billyray that something is simple so he should do it himself, when he just said it's difficult for him. He may have limited time, limited interest, or any number of other reasons why its difficult/hard.

[Billyray]

Yeah well said paul, time is the biggest constraint. I work a normal 40 hour week plus a second job and what's left over goes to the dream of being a fulltime beach bum and a part time webmaster.

I think if you look at someone who is successful you will see that they delegate and outsource areas where they have no specialist knowledge. That's just smart business and time effective. A great example of this from what I've read is Sean ($90k pa wow!) and Chris who uses templates too.

I think James, if you took the milk out of the fridge before the use by date was up, you wouldn't have to "chew your milk" .

[Cutter]

Templates are fine -- as long as they are designed with your goals in mind. I'd be willing to put some together for anyone on here that doesn't mind paying me some money.

A lot of the templates you'd buy from a reseller just aren't going to work very well for SEO sites, or "Adsense optimized" sites.

[RedHerself]

Thanks for the help guys.

It's like Billyray said - it's the time. I would have to learn coding from scratch and there is so much else to do......so I'm trying to think of how to get started quickly and maybe learn code as I go along.

It seems maybe a template would be a possible way to begin.

Now on to the next question - if I buy a template and it's just one page can I add a shopping cart to it? And will that be enough for a starter e-commerce site?

Cutter is there someplace I can see some of your samples (am I gonna get in trouble for asking on the boards?)

Anyone else have suggestions on where I could start looking at templates?

Thanks!

Red

[Cutter]

Honestly, I don't have any shopping cart experience. All of my e-commerce sites only sell a single targetted product. I will look into this and PM you -- but if someone else on Website Publisher can answer this please do!

[paul]

Take a look at www.ecommercetemplates.com The shopping card is part of the template. I have purchased a copy and started playing around with it at www.selling-stuff.com. What I have worked with seemed to be nicely done, but I have yet to try connecting to a credit card gateway and many of the other functions.

Perhaps I should also mention that I first bought a couple of templates almost two years ago and did not find them helpful then. It requires some level of understanding of HTML etc. to use a template effectively.