Template Based Website:

 

A template based website begins with a pre-made template that you find online. Then you modify the template to suit your desires and to present your business properly.

There are thousands and thousands of templates available online. Many are free, but the best are not. The ones that are paid can cost anywhere from a few dollars to thousands of dollars.

You can find basic HTML templates, Flash templates, Joomla templates, Wordpress templates or any of a number of other platform templates. I have included links in the menus on the left and right to some websites where you can look over some free and paid templates.

If you know what you are doing you can modify any template for your needs. Or you can hire me to modify it for you. I am very experienced in modifying templates to make them a custom work for your business.

The first thing is to find a template that is laid out in a way you like. Keep in mind when selecting a template the content you will be putting into it. You will be somewhat tied to the design of the template although various layout features can be modified. Contact me with a link to any template you are considering with information on what you would like to do. I will look it over and advise you at no charge.

The pricing for a template based website ranges from the low hundreds, to a couple thousand dollars.

Click on any of the links to the left to see some examples of paid and free templates. WordPress and Joomla are platforms for building websites. Joomla is a complete content management system, whereas WordPress is basically a blog platform that recently updated to be a content management system.

I prefer Joomla as it was built from the ground up to be a complete content management system, however, WordPress is also a good choice for the basic small business website. Both are free. Joomla has thousands of extensions, like various types of contact forms, user management modules, mass email systems and many other free and paid extensions. WordPress has the same, although most are not free and there are much less choices.

If choosing Joomla you can choose templates for Joomla 1.5 or 1.6. There is a version 1.7 available, but it is so new that there are not as many choices for templates and extensions. Also many hosting companies do not fully supposrt Joomla 1.7 yet. I advise to stay within Joomla 1.5 for your first choice and Joomla 1.6 otherwise.

The premium templates are the paid ones. Free templates usually ask you to leave the link to their designer on the footer.