[bluesage]

Hi,

Im curious to know if any of you designers out there, design everything from scratch yourselves ? or if you sometimes use templates ? (ie. templatemonster.com)

[seraphlm]

i never use templates. but sometimes, i refer to other web site's coding

[skyrocket]

Nope - don't use templates. Custom-build from scratch is the way to go. The 'skeleton' of the page is often a 2-column or 3-column CSS template which I've made myself and often re-use. I haven't used something from template monster but I would put money on it that it would be garbage to work with and would pay little or no attention to web standards guidelines.

[riat_sila]

The trouble with use templatemonster is that if you don't buy and exclusive template you'll see every man and his dog has already used it. It's much easier just to (as skyrocket said) use a standard CSS outline to build on and just use your skills in Photoshop to finish the rest.

[cathy]

Hi,

According to my experience template monster its most useful for designing the templates.

[skyrocket]

Que? Run that by me one more time... :/

[EngAdven]

My experience of templates from people like templatemonster is that they are over designed and generally take longer to learn and add content to than starting my own from scratch.
However, there is a growing trend for 'package' sites, Joomla, Wordpress etc. and I've been impressed with even some of the free templates for these. I can see myself applying a range of website solutions in the future and just adapting other people's templates to suit.

[lwallenstein]

It is up to the client. I always try and steer people to original designs however many times my clients have a very specific idea about how they want it to appear and a lot of the times that is based on a template. I have even in the past recoded bad templates to better XHTML. Before I go buy anything from template monster I would go check out oswd.org, they have some good stuff and free

[Marc.RR]

Well said, lwallenstein, it is generally upto the client. But if it's upto me, I'd never, ever use templates, although I look at other websites for inspiration on the layout, for instance, it helps me decide where to place the page elements, the logo, the menu, the userbox, the ads and what not.

[gbmea42]

I think that designing from template actualy takes longer than just doing the design yourself. i have been known to look through a bunch of templates at the start of a project to get some fresh ideas.

my vote is just to do your own design. save headache and heartache.

[Paul]

don't use templates except from my own basic template layouts to save a bit of time.

[bluesage]

interesting to see so many different views on the matter . I my self prefer to design from scratch, and like many have mentioned, is probably less work than using a template which you have to figure out first

the free template site mentioned (oswd) is good, if looking for a general template to work from.

[mrelusive]

I use very basic custom templates for my html and css files, with most of the my everyday use divs, meta tags, etc. declared already (in the html template) and appropriate comment blocks (that I use for headers and general information) and the selectors I always use already set up (in the css template).

I've written about my templates on my blog if anyone is interested (title "Rapid XHTML/CSS development using templates").

[pgo]

Templates, i.e. those found on sites like TemplateMonster are the antithesis of design, so anyone who uses them and refers to themselves with the "designer" moniker are worthless hacks.