I was just wondering...

[gedlawson]

I know you guys are all coders and everything an this is probably against your principals, but do you know ay of the best websites for free templates ?

The ones ive found are not very good at all, very basic.


Thanks

[hrvoje461]

If you are looking for free templates you can try one in my signature.
There is also good free website templates blog that you can check, or free business templates, or go to oswd.org you can find tousends of free css templates there.

[barsa]

on me http://www.templatemonster.com is best website template website.

[camp185]

There is nothing wrong with using free templates except with the problem that you are having. You get what you paid for.

[3ncryptabl3_lick]

Starting out with a free template is a decent way to get things moving if you're just looking to get online and start selling something or offering your service.

The one thing that bugs me the most is when a web design company uses a template from a template warehouse then professes their design skills and in their portfolio are just more templates from template warehouses. Lame.

But for someone who is trying to sell products or some other service, templates are just fine, in fact they are probably the best bet for a start-up. However they do tend to come with a few caveats. Namely, the fact that the design (unless bought outright) can be used by anyone else and the fact that making changes does require some knowledge of coding or graphics.

[StarLab]

Originally Posted by gedlawson

I know you guys are all coders and everything an this is probably against your principals, but do you know ay of the best websites for free templates ?

The ones ive found are not very good at all, very basic.

As mentioned above, "You get what you pay for" seems to apply here. However, there are some very nice Paid templates which are offered at a reasonable price. (Depending where you look) They won't be unique as others have purchased them, but they likely will not be as widely used as some of the free ones.

Originally Posted by 3ncryptabl3_lick

Starting out with a free template is a decent way to get things moving if you're just looking to get online and start selling something or offering your service.

The one thing that bugs me the most is when a web design company uses a template from a template warehouse then professes their design skills and in their portfolio are just more templates from template warehouses. Lame.

But for someone who is trying to sell products or some other service, templates are just fine, in fact they are probably the best bet for a start-up. However they do tend to come with a few caveats. Namely, the fact that the design (unless bought outright) can be used by anyone else and the fact that making changes does require some knowledge of coding or graphics.

I deal with a lot of startup companies. Money is always an issue when quoting them a price for custom designs. It usually gets them moving on to the next quote by a kid with a copy of FrontPage.

Offering clients a reduced price by utilizing free or reasonably priced templates seems to be working out for me. I simply tell them that once things take off and their budget looks better, we can talk about doing something more unique that better reflects the look of their business.

It's actually been a better part of a year since a client has opted for a custom template. I can usually crank out sites in a couple days now as opposed to a couple weeks. In the long run, I've made more money going this route as quote rejections are now minimal.