DEV Community

Cover image for Ready-To-Use Website Templates: Yay or Nay? ๐Ÿค”๐Ÿคท๐Ÿผโ€โ™€๏ธ
Rachel for XenoX

Posted on

Ready-To-Use Website Templates: Yay or Nay? ๐Ÿค”๐Ÿคท๐Ÿผโ€โ™€๏ธ

We at Skynox Tech are busy redesigning our website. In the past few days, we've debated about colors, fonts, designs, logos, UX, and almost everything else. ๐Ÿ™†โ€โ™‚๏ธ๐Ÿ™†โ€โ™€๏ธ

While the whole process has been fun, taking too many decisions in too little time has been somewhat overwhelming for the team.

It got me thinking - maybe ready-to-use website templates would be a good idea?!

What do you people think? Are there any negatives I'm not seeing? Do you know of any good places where I can find the best website templates?

Share your thoughts below! ๐Ÿ™Œ

Top comments (12)

Collapse
 
jhlyeung profile image
John Yeung

My experience using templates in the past have been bittersweet, more bitter than sweet.

Inevitably customization is required. It generally takes longer to figure out how to tweak the existing template the right way to get what you want. And often after a few tweaks, it doesn't even resemble the original glossy template that you chose...

Collapse
 
rachelagnihotri profile image
Rachel

Well, that must hurt! ๐Ÿ˜ง

Collapse
 
daniel13rady profile image
Daniel Brady

It got me thinking - maybe ready-to-use website templates would be a good idea?! What do you people think? Are there any negatives I'm not seeing?

I think it depends on your goals for the site.

Templates have their use. I think when you use them for a website, you facilitate the creation of terraced houses, and terraced houses appeal to some people.
UK terraced houses

If your site values function over form, templates can be a good tool to leverage.

But it's hard to stand out from a crowd when you're part of it; even in the case of a terraced house, it's hard to say any one of them has their own character or brand that is distinct and separate from the others, beyond something superficial like "faรงade color."

So if any of your goals include something like "differentiate", "be memorable", or "communicate a brand message", a template is probably not the right path for you.

Collapse
 
rachelagnihotri profile image
Rachel

The terraced houses analogy makes so much sense. Thanks for sharing this!

Collapse
 
shaijut profile image
Shaiju T

Nice, if premium then, themeforest.net , envato.com I think, . By the way Did you find any other ?

Collapse
 
rachelagnihotri profile image
Rachel

Thanks for sharing these.

And no, I couldn't really find a good, mess-free platform that truly had mindblowing designs :(

Collapse
 
shaijut profile image
Shaiju T

Also you can check below comment:

dev.to/shaijut/comment/12k1c

Finally after research, Kindly share with us the websites you found. :)

Collapse
 
shaijut profile image
Shaiju T

Did you finally found the templates ?
Kindly share with us the websites you found. :)

Collapse
 
giorgosk profile image
Giorgos Kontopoulos ๐Ÿ‘€

My experience with ready made templates is you get what you pay for. They are nice if you want to use them as they are but if you start customizing them you will probably need to take more time then actually starting something on your own. At least that is my experience with having used many themeforest templates were the quality of the code was not in had with the quality of the design that was presented to you initially and one more thing I see with cheap templates they are usually full of bloat. You get 100 features but you only need 5 of them it is hard to make the template only keep 5 because everything is interlinked.

Collapse
 
rachelagnihotri profile image
Rachel

Good quality code is just as important as a good looking design. Based on the comments I've received until now, I think this is the main thing missing from website templates.

Also, a little more flexibility in these templates would make things better.
Thanks for sharing your experience though.

Collapse
 
rakeshsagar64 profile image
Rakesh Sagar

A good site for static templates is html5up.net/
But any templates always falls short in some way

Collapse
 
rachelagnihotri profile image
Rachel

Love the quote!