Create Affordable and Professional Quality Websites Using Web Templates

If you want to have a website of your own but don't have the time or resources to invest, a smart way would be the use of website templates to create your site instead of building one from scratch.

Unlike custom sites that often take months to build, you can create your template based site within a few days, and sometimes even in hours.

Before you start your search for the right website template, you will need to plan the purpose and features of your site. Once the objective that you want your website to achieve is clear, start the hunt for the right website template.

While some companies offer complete web templates, some other companies have got website templates designed to fulfill specific needs. In the former case, you simply need to add your content and images in order to get a functional website ready to go live online.

However, if you need just the Flash introduction page for your site, try using Flash intro templates. You may even use logo and banner templates to create your unique corporate identity. For designing the pages of your site, there is a wide variety of basic templates available in FrontPage or Dreamweaver that can be put to good use. In other words, you can choose either a complete package or a specific template that fulfills your needs.

The best thing about such website templates is that you need not be a master of web designing skills or have any knowledge of programming and codes. All that you need to do is simply select one of the professionally designed templates and click the required options to create your own website by adding your desired content in the places marked for the same.

Many of such templates even allow you to customize fonts, colors, and add links, images, Flash etc. What's more, you can even integrate message boards or chat rooms in your site by using the tools that come with many of these website templates available in the market.

If you think that website templates are only for creating basic websites, think again. You can even create an ecommerce store these days by using such a template and build your inventory, catalog, shipping calculator, and almost everything else that you require to get your online store functional

In case you have been waiting for long to get your own site, it's time to find a template that has the right color and the right graphics in place, which you can customize in order to get a website that matches your requirements.

Visit our website today to download a free trial version of website builder that does not require coding and programming. You can also find flash software including a flash gallery, music player, video player and interactive map creator.

Dreamweaver Tip: Build Better Websites Faster with Templates

If you want to make money marketing products and services on the World Wide Web, you must have a consistent look and feel to the pages that comprise your web site. Dreamweaver templates make this easy.

Dreamweaver templates relieve you of much of the tedious job of editing individual web pages, because you create the template one time then apply it to initial pages in your site. If you want to make changes alter, you can make them to the template and they are automatically applied to all of the pages that are based on your template.

Using Templates is a two step process:

1. Create the template.

2. Instantiate the template into one or more actual web documents.

So when should you use a template? How do you create it? How do you apply it? How do you make changes to a template and update the pages it applies to? The following sections will answer these questions.

When to Use a Template

Use a template whenever you have a group of pages that share a basic common group of layout features, and well defined areas that need to be customized. For example, you might use a template to define a group of pages with a three column layout, a common background color, and common menu bar at the top of the page, possibly common links on both sides of the page, and only the center column of the page left available for customization.

How to Create a Template

Dreamweaver gives you two methods to create a template, but this article discusses only the second method. The methods are:

Create a template from an existing page.


Create a template from a new page.

Here are the steps to create a Dreamweaver template from a new page:

1. Click the File menu, then click New.

2. A "New Document" dialog box will pop up. In the left column (the Category column) of the dialog box select Template page and in the right column (the Template column) select "HTML template". Click the Create button in the lower right corner of the dialog box.

The template is created. Now save the template as follows:

1. Click the File menu, then click Save.

2. You may get a Dreamweaver message complaining that the template has no editable regions. Ignore it, and click OK.

3. Now a "Save as Template" box will pop up. Type the name you want for the template in the bottom entry field, which is labeled "Save as".

Dreamweaver will automatically create a Templates folder and save the template into it. The template will have a ".dwt" file extension.

Populate the Template

To populate a simple Dreamweaver template, follow these steps:

1. Add content

2. Mark content as editable where applicable

A detailed description of these two steps follows:

Adding content to a Dreamweaver template is the same as adding content to any other page -- except . . . you should think carefully about the fact your content will be replicated on all instance pages based on your template.

As an example, you might do a table based three column layout, where the first row of the table is just one cell containing a graphic, and the second row of the table contains three cells -- links on the left, links on the right, and an editable region in the center.

You create the table, and then add the top graphic and the links as you normally would. This leaves only the center cell of the second row of the table to be marked as editable. Do this as follows:

1. Select the center cell of the second row of the table.

2. On the "Common" Bar, click the Templates popup menu, then click the Editable Region command.

3. A "New Editable Region" dialog window should pop up. Type a name (for example "Content1") into the "name" text box, then click OK.

Now the template has an editable region. Save it.

Create a Page Based on the Template

This is where you get a return on the work you did creating your template. The following steps describe how to create a page based on a template.

1. Click the File menu, then click New.

2. A "New Document" dialog box will pop up. Select the "Templates" tab at the top of the dialog box.

3. Now there should be two columns at the top of the "Templates" tab in the dialog box. The first column is labeled "Templates for:" and the second column is labeled "Site [site name]". In the first column, select your site; then in the second column, select your template.

4. Select "Update page when template changes" in the lower right corner of the tab.

5. Now click Create in the lower right corner of the tab.

6. A new untitled page should now have been created. Save the page, giving it the name you want.

Now you can make changes in any of the editable regions of the new page.

At this point, making changes is very simple, because Dreamweaver will only allow you to edit regions of the page that were defined as editable in the original template. If you try to edit anywhere else, the editing cursor will turn into a little circle with a slash through it and you cannot edit or delete anything.

When you are done customizing the page, save it. If you make any changes to the template in the future, they will be automatically added to the page you just created.

Conclusion

If you would like to know more of the under-the-hood mechanics of how Dreamweaver implements templates, see my article "How Dreamweaver Templates Work".

Sam Mela does web design and runs a math tutoring business in Springfield Virginia. His web site is http://www.WeekendSuccess.com.