Free Website Templates Guide

You can have a professional looking website in a matter of minutes without having to pay a web designer hundreds to thousands of dollars in fees.

Free website templates sites are available everywhere on the web. They can be easily found by typing "free website templates" in popular search engines. You can preview hundreds to thousands of cool looking themes to match the type of product or service you provide.

Save Time and Money

Not only will you save in costs, but you will get your website completed much faster than if you had to build one from scratch. If you have some working knowledge of HTML, CSS and Photoshop, then using these free website templates should be a snap. If you are not familiar with these skills, then you can learn the basics from free online tutorials. It will only take you a little bit more time to build your site than someone who already has the experience.

This brief guide will introduce you to what you can do with these free website templates.

Getting Started

Before you do anything, you should read the rules that these sites have for using their templates. Usually, they will let you modify the templates and redistribute them if you give them credit as the original source. And you don't necessarily need to link back directly to their site.

They will allow you to remove their link from the templates. But, what they don't want you to do is repackage the templates and resell them. That's only a fair condition for using their templates if you consider that you didn't pay for them and they gave you something that would have costs your hundreds if not thousands of dollars in individual web designer fees.

High Quality Themes

Don't be fooled by the word "free." Many of these templates have a contemporary professional look. And the way that is achieved is with the high quality stock images or photos included. If you were to build these templates from scratch, normally you would find these images from sites that offer stock photos that may then make you pay royalties for using them.

Immediate Download

With some free website templates sites, you won't need to give your email address or register. They are not going to make you sign up to a newsletter and send you spam. You will be able to click a download link off their site and save a zipped file immediately to your hard drive.

Everything You Need

As an example, inside these zipped files you will find an index.htm file, a style.css file, a PSD file and an image folder containing images. Here's a breakdown of what these files are for:

1. Index.htm - This is the basic template which contains the HTML code. In this file you can add the links going to other pages within your site or links going outside. To keep the theme or design the same within your site, you'll have to copy this file, modify it and rename it for each of the different pages you want your site to have.

2. Style.css - This is the file that controls the look of your site. In this file, you can change the font type, color and size. You can also modify or add things such as background colors, borders, spacing, alignments, positioning and more.

3. PSD - This is the graphic file that you can modify. You can open up this file in Photoshop to customize it. For example, you can overlay text over a header image with the name of your website. Since many people are using these templates, it is a good idea to make your site unique by changing the elements a bit on the graphics provided.

4. Image folder - This folder contains the images related to the theme of the template you chose. Besides images of objects or people, it may include buttons, round corners, borders or spacers. Files are either in the .gif or .jpeg format.

Summing Up

If you are afraid of screwing up these templates, then there's always the option of hiring someone with the necessary skills and experience.

Now that you know where to easily find free website templates and what you can do with them, you'll soon be on your way to creating your own professional website giving your visitors the confidence to buy what you're selling.

Copyright © 2008 by Leroy Chan