Choosing a Website Template

There is a multitude of technologies and applications available to design and publish a website. When designing a website, there are a few things to consider before diving into a design, but number one is.

Functionality: Before even worrying about colors, pictures, and gimics…the look of your site, you need to consider what you want your website to do. Most technologies and development platforms are intertwined and can be integrated together. Either way, the first thing to look at is what you want your site to do. Once you have the basic requirements of a site, you can then design the basic look and feel of the site and customize it to whatever your heart desires.

• Static html: A basic site just to create a web presence. Good if you just want your viewers to know where you are, what your site’s about, and do not expect to expand upon or add onto the site often. javascript and graphics can be added for effect.
• Dynamic: An interactive site, database driven allowing for interaction between the user and the back-end data stored on the site. Typical languages and applications include php/mysql platforms, asp.net, coldfusion, etc that allow dynamic content to be displayed, changed, and updated depending on the users interaction with the website. E-commerce sites are dynamic sites with certain tools or functionality to allow for 3rd party transactions, shopping cart capability, etc.
• Content Managment Systems (CMS): Also database driven and also applied to either standard websites or to dynamically driven sites. Allows the user to quickly and easily update web content via an online portal. What can be changed can be set at an administrative level. Products such as Joomla and WordPress.org are good examples of CMS.
• Flash: What was once just software that was used to add animated content to an existing website, is now sophisticated enough to build entire websites with complete Flash animation. Draw backs to this design is in SEO. It is very difficult to design a standard optimization plan with a purely Flash site. Often the technology is mixed with and/or ran tandem to other platforms such as html or php.

As mentioned, these technologies can be and most often are intermingled. A CMS add-on can run a large dynamic e-commerce site or a small web-blog. A Flash intro page can be added to a static html site. Some pages may run a combination of all sorts of technology. Only requirement is ensuring that your hosting platform supports all languages and technologies you wish to deploy.

Once you know what your site should do, you have 2 choices: Build it from scratch or Find a template. Most web developers today work from some form of a template or another. There are literally 100s of thousands to choose from, some free, and some not very expensive at all considering development time. Templates can be completely customized for looks. I choose a template based on the functionality as described above, and the structure and style. Colors and images can always be changed. The following are some website development tools and template resources. Some free and some not. When professionally developing a site I often use a combination of tools and applications to depending on what is needed:

OPEN SOURCE (FREE)

• oswd.org - html/xhtml/css templates
• wordpress.org - php/mysql (Blogging CMS Platform)
• wordpress.org Themes - (Templates for wordpress CMS). There are hundreds more out there. Just Google it!
• Joomla – php/mysql (CMS Platform)
• Joomla Templates - Google it! 100′s of sites with free templates. Also, Joomla allows you to reverse engineer existing sites you manage. You can drop some code in an existing page, and Joomla will download and convert it into a Joomla site!
• Ruby on Rails - html and xml output and requires the Mongrel via Apache server for web hosting although more and more services are Rails compatable. Twitter is mostly a Ruby on Rails site.
• XOOPS – Another php CMS. XOOPS free templates are available Google it!
• XAMPP – Local Host package for local development of php/mysql on Apache
• Zen Cart - Shopping cart for e-commerce sites. embedded xhtml front-end.
• PHPlist – Free mailing and subscription service.
• There are dozens more open source platforms and development tools available which include free templates.

Thinking of launching a WordPress site?