Building a site from scratch is fine, if you’re in business as a web designer.  Web designers and webmasters are two different groups of people.  Sure, some folks belong in both groups, but they really have two different sets of goals and responsibilities.  A web designer creates a “look” for a website.  A webmaster keeps the site running and updated.  This site is about empowering new webmasters.

Don’t misunderstand me, you do want your website to be unique.  That’s for sure.  That doesn’t, however, mean that you have to start from a blank screen and do every little thing yourself.

Most web designers frown on using templates for sites.  Me?  I love them.  After all, my business is to design functional  and informative websites.  That’s what I do.  That’s what all good webmasters do.

The trap that a lot of new webmasters fall into is that they spend so much time designing and coding their new site, that they never have time to update it or promote it.  Soon, when they haven’t seen any increase in traffic or any signs of “life” from their site, they start to lose interest in the project.  Once this happens, another potentially interesting website goes by the wayside.  Don’t let this happen to your site.

It is for this reason that I build almost all of my sites using WordPress or another CMS application.  Furthermore, I do tend to use templates for my sites.  Sure, I customize them a bit, but I don’t start from a blank screen.  It would be very easy for me to build my own WP themes, but it would also be very time consuming and, friends, time is the most precious thing we have in this life.  After all, once gone, you cannot recover one single second. 

Now, if you’re going to use templates, you can find a bunch of great templates for free at the WordPress website.  Of course, you’ll also find some really bad ones there as well.  That’s the chance you take when you go the free route.  As for me, I like to purchase professionally-made templates.  Of course, they cost more (anything costs more than “free”), but, in the long run, they’re worth it.  I have found that paid templates usually tend to work more reliably than their free counterparts.  In short, they do what they’re supposed to do.  If you’re building a personal site with few “bells and whistles,” a free theme will probably work just fine.  On the other hand, if you’re building a commercial site , and you want smooth functionality and the look of professionalism, you can’t beat a well-made professional theme.

The two theme producers that I use most are Woo Themes (who created the theme for this site – which, by they way, they have now made available for free!) and StudioPress.  I really love the work Brian Gardner (Studio Press) has been doing on some of his newest themes.  They look great.  He offers a package containing all of the themes on the site for $199.95 and I just purchased it for some new sites I’m working on.  If you are planning to create a lot of sites, you might want to consider that option as well as it would be more economical than purchasing individual themes separately.

It doesn’t matter whether you choose to use free themes or premium ones, the point is to give your site the unique and professional look you desire while preserving your most precious resource – your time.

Related posts:

1. Using A Free Blogging Web Site
2. Static HTML Versus Blog Versus CMS.

Over the years that I have been building and running websites, this has happened to me quite often.  I build a website that looks absolutely stunning to me.  I mean, I just love it and I think the whole world should see it so I tell some friends and family members about it. 

They, in turn, look up the site and go “ugh” and in “ugly.”  What happened?  Was my design really that ugly?  Thankfully, my design work usually isn’t the culprit.  More often than not, it is the result of cross-browser incompaitbility.  What looks fine to me in my browser, looks strange or disjointed in theirs.  The fancy code and scripts that I think make the site “pop,” don’t show up right to them and the resulting “holes” make my site look as though it was made of swiss cheese.

You may be inclined to believe that this only happens to Internet “newbies.”  Let me assure you that it can happen to anyone.  As a matter of fact, I’m dealing with this very issue right now.

You see, I have several browsers on my primary PC that I use to check my websites.  I use IE (of course), FireFox, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera.  When I was configuring this site, I checked it on the various browsers and the site looked about the same on all of them.  I was pleased.  That pleasure was short-lived however when I tried to show the site to some of my friends.  When I pulled the site up for them, the ad boxes on the right hand side would not stay properly aligned.  That’s when I discovered the fatal flaw in my thinking.  I had checked the site against several different browsers, but all of the versions I used were the latest stable releases.  I hadn’t checked it on any legacy releases.  When I look at this site using IE 7 (which is what I use in my office), the site looks great.  The ad problem appears when you view it in IE 6.

If I had checked it on a legacy browser, I could have saved myself a lot of embarrasment.  Just how do you go about checking your site on multiple browsers and multiple versions of the same browser?  Well, you could install a lot of software on your PC, but I really don’t recommend that.  There’s a much easier way. 

There is a free service called BrowserShots.orgthat will allow you to see what your website  looks like on over 60 different browsers.  All you do is go to their website and enter your domain name.  They send out the request to their farm of computers, each running a different OS and browser combination.  Each computer will pull up the site and take a snapshot of it.  These snapshots get posted to the BrowserShots.org site and you get a pretty good idea of what your site will look like to your visitor.  It’s a good deal.

When I ran this site through BrowserShots, I discovered that it looks fine in the modern browsers, but starts to look strange in some of the older ones.  In IE 5 and 6, there is the ad box issue.  In IE 4, some of the navigation coding and CSS go unrecognized resulting in a site that appears incomplete.

Once you know what the issues are, you can decide how to procede.  As for me, I will take a shot at tweaking the code to make the ad boxes appear correctly in IE 6, but I’m not going to worry about the display issues with IE 4 and 5.  In looking at the visitor logs for my sites, I see that so few visitors are using those browsers that it wouldn’t be worth the time and energy that it would take to correct.  After all, it’s 2009.  If someone is still running IE 4, they should seriously consider an upgrade.  After all, IE is free.

Well, folks, there you have another item to add to your pre-launch checklist.

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1) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like “welcome” or “click here to enter”. In fact, they are just that — pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the “back” button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don’t know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don’t confuse your visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they’re not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it — volume or muting controls would work fine.

Related posts:

1. Static HTML Versus Blog Versus CMS.