Custom Web Site Design Or Website Templates - The Big Debate

[Hung Dinh]

The following article is published at Webpronews
by Christine Anderssen

A lot of custom web site designers are really critical of commercial website templates. I have seen snide comments on Forums and Blogs along the lines of 'This site has template written all over it'.

There are two main reasons not to like templates, and then some ways to mitigate these problems.

Lets 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 lets 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, 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....

About the Author:
Christine Anderssen is a custom website designer specialising in Content Management Systems. You can find her at Tailormade4you Website Design - Custom Web Site Design Services

[Hung Dinh]

And here are my comments

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.

I know that he is refering to other non-CMS driven template. Just want to confirm that It is not true to Joomla template in general as well as JoomlArt templates. All of the css are defined in a 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.

I am proud that all of JA recent templates are tableless and 100% CSS driven

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.

A great thing about Joomla templates is that they will collapse and auto-expand to the size of your contents. And with some CSS tricks you can even give your visitors to switch to their favorite resolutions (800, 1024 or auto)

[itguy]

My comments...

I am relatively new to Joomla and PHP but not to web design. My background is in static websites and dynamic sites utilizing ColdFusion. I have created many static sites and quite a few sites in CF that were built from the ground up. I have expended a lot of time and effort creating sites. What I have come to realize is that the web is about content. Sure the site needs to look good and it needs to complement the clients image from a graphics standpoint but the bottom line is that it's all about content.

Joomla offers a really nice interface to manage the site content once the template is built. Using custom templates I can re-skin the template and tweak the css to match the clients image and I can pound in all the content. Site creation takes a small amount of time as compared to building the site from scratch and once it's created the maintenance is quick and easy. This translates to a much lower cost to create the initial site and a much lower cost to maintain it. It's a win-win situation for anyone that is trying to build a web presence.

The people complaining about the use of templates are the designers not the clients. Most clients are looking for a good looking site that displays their content at an affordable total cost of ownership. That's the bottom line.

Just my opinion As usual take it or leave it!

[green-mamba]

Hi,

thanks for inviting to take part in this dicussion, it is much appreciated!

I just need to say that there has been a BIG misunderstanding! You must realise that when I talk about 'Commercial templates' I am not referring to commercial JOOMLA templates, but to commercial NON JOOMLA templates, like the ones that you buy at Templatemonster or BoxedArt.

Obviously I totally agree that commercial JOOMLA templates have all the right qualities like not using tables, using CSS, being dynamic etc.

The point of my article was actually the following:

- Commercial (non-joomla) templates like the ones at Templatemonster suffer from some inherent problems (rigid, not using CSS etc)
- If you convert these templates to Joomla then the problems go away!

Hope this clears up the misunderstanding!

Christine
PS. I am actually a girl, not a guy
PPS. Love your templates

[itguy]

Sorry. Must have been reading too fast and did not pick up on that. LOL I agree with you!

[pibrew]

I have built several sites using Joomla and have used templates (some from here!) and I have to say that there are good points to both arguments. I am going to start building my own templates, but will probably still use other templates as well. I think I wanted to learn how to build templates for my own satisfaction to see how "Joomla works".

There will always be a place for templates in my opinion. Some template builders will get something akin to "writer's block" and need a template to give them ideas for a new site. So, I think there is plenty of room for everyone.

Robert

[NarinderPal Singh]

Well thanks for a nice debate... already going on here ... I would say like green mamaba said earlier ... about the template monster template usage... Now the difference who makes here is the user in the I guess ... now take a view point of templatemonster ... there are many gud templates there at template monster ... but then like we say gud for the static websites ... but what if i buy a template monster template and just keep the design same and then convert it into or design with the base design of that template and then using all the div tags and everything for joomla ... to in the end make it usable with joomla ... I have done that in past ... so i would say here you get the templates that are readymade for the user even any user who is a first time user for joomla can get it's template here and just go on with one of the best websites ... but then commercial templates at template monster are static ... but then in the end it all depends on the designer how he converts it into the css based dynamic template ... for any cms ...

Like every template it's the design that matters ... the first luk ... and thats what we comment on when we first luk at a website ... it's only after certain period of time when we start using the template we get to know about the usability of the template ... so i would say ... buying a template from commercial template sellers like template monsters give you that huge range of designs to chose from ... but then in the it's all in the hands of a designer to convert that template into dynamic web template ... because in this ERA if you talk about static template ... well bro that term doesn't exist in this era of easily usable cms ... so it's the technical knowledge that makes a template dynamic ... otherwise ... every dynamic template has been a static template right there in your photoshop ... and that's where template monster is ... the rest is how to convert it to use it ...

[visicafe]

I have been member here for a while and run a small company in Norway, we do anything from brochure work, graphical design and website work. I have been engaged in my daily duties and I got tired of making illustrations for the local newspapers. Seen from a point Joomla user view (I have been addicted to this cms as well since the 4.5.0 version was out and hot). What impresses me concerning the use of mambo and joomla and mambo as a very good tool to make a website run and to make it easy to maintenance is the way it seperates visual layout from content.

What I really get when I get a mambo/joomla template is some graphic s layout ready to perform some custom work on. Who expects to get a ready to run and go solution? Actually the best description of a template as far as I have seen is "the graphics you need for your website", now the plus is when mambo or joomla is in use, then you you also gets much of the "engine stuff" required to make it run. Difference between TM and others (joomla templates in particular): they are not heading for a restricted target group as a mambo/joomla user always will be. It would be interesting to see what they present the day they start releasing Joomla templates. Of course they are not covering all demands, but theire catalogue is huge, I mean a huge catalogue of expression.
What is nice about Joomlart and what I really like is that you don't only do blog design. Blog blog me here and blog blog me there, I think most joomla design developers maybe could learn by looking at what TM does? It is the graphics required for a nice composition. Then it is just a matter of finding the composition you like and/suits your business no matter if you are just a privat, small business or corporate.

The debate question? Purchasing a template can make the webdesign task easier but it wil not replace the fact that some people need to get custom work done. Not even "joomla" will be a replacement for that, the simple logics actually makes some people more confused (that is our experience from our customers). What makes the difference is: Some people can handle it, others can't or they just don't have the time to deal with the necessary steps to accomplish it.

Then how about this? I think the real explanation is that graphics is an expression that shows something. Template is then a predefined expression. There is plenty of customers who wants their own epression at their website and this will typically require some custom work even if it fundametally is based on a template. In the joomla community we alwys talk about how many we are, and that is nice because there is an incredible amount of users but there is just as many not using it but using other things to un their website and the requirements of visual expression will never die.

Anyway you do a good job here at Joomlarts, thank you for not doing blog design only! Cheers.... !

Regards
Norgaard

[Hung Dinh]

Thank you for your nice post, we are going to expand our design capability and coverage. Currently, our designers are working on a J! + VirtualMart template as well as a J! + Vbulletin template. Hope our efforts will provide more flexibility in customization for those who expect a total solution of joomla + shopping cart or community forum.

[reviewguy]

I personally think developing a true custom website design will enhance the brand image of a company and thus contribute to better sales. If you're investing your time and money to design a website, a little more money and effort can make a lot of difference for your website. With website design companies stationed all over the world, the cost of designing a website has come down increasing productivity.

However, many organizations and designers do not go beyond just developing a unique graphics, and look and feel to develop a tailor-made website design. Ideally a custom website design should enable a company to project an image that equals its larger competitors. It should have an easy to navigate style, a pleasant look and feel and global marketing presence on the internet

Here is a related article by a Website Design Compnay on developing an intelligent Custom Website Design that truly distinguishes your company.