by Max Lehmann

Created on: May 11, 2011   Last Updated: April 30, 2012

While it's undeniable that a web presence can help both individuals and businesses, many people don't have the technical know-how to build a website themselves, or the funds to pay to professionals. Luckily, there is now a halfway house solution, that of web templates. These are files that are available for purchase, or sometimes for free, that allow a user without much knowledge to implement a website by replacing a little boilerplate content. This may seem like a quick fix for the problem of building a site without the expertise, but it is very important to avoid a few common pitfalls in implementing a site. This is a brief guide to some of the issues a template user may face.

1) Not customising enough

Templates will generally arrive in a package with some best guesses for what pages the site will need. It may be tricky to work out what to change, but if some of the sections or navigation options are irrelevant then they should be removed. A site that doesn't invite contact, for example, should customise its site such that the contact details are hidden. A site with irrelevant pages, pages that say "coming soon" or, worse, broken links looks unprofessional and just plain bad and will do a site owner no favours at all. Customise the site to ensure it meets the relevant needs, and only then should it be uploaded. Otherwise the impression it gives is worse than not having a site at all.

2) Breaking the code

HTML, CSS, javascript and all the other code that a website uses is often not robust. It is very easy to accidentally remove just one angled bracket or piece of punctuation and break everything. When a user edits a template badly they run the risk of destroying the site, so it is important to check very thoroughly that nothing is broken after updating the content. It is important to check in more than one web browser, too, as the implementation of broken code may be more obvious to some users than to others. The template code will always be available to check against if it isn't overwritten, so it is a good idea to keep a copy and carefully check the new versus the old if issues do occur. Just uploading the files and assuming they will work is an easy mistake to make, and can look very unprofessional.

3) Choosing a bad template

Many kinds of templates are available and many are custom made for particular kinds of sites. When shopping around to find templates it is important to bear in mind the kind of site it will be implemented on. A serious business will not

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