Make a Website - Should You Use a Template to Make Your Website?

[Marc Martin]

There are two main approaches to creating a new website. Either you
start from scratch, a blank page, or you use a template. I will argue
that using a template is the better method.
It is sometimes claimed that using a website template to create a new
website is not a good idea. The main reasoning is that websites based
on templates all end up looking the same. But this is not true,
templates based website only look the same when the user does not make
enough modifications to the template.
It is argued that there are only around 7 types of stories: the quest,
voyage and return, rebirth, overcoming the monster, etc. Yet from
these 7 base stories there a millions of unique stories. Every book
from every library has elements on these 7 types and yet nobody would
claim that they are all the same. Every book is unique and different.
It is what you do with the base stories that makes it unique.
The same applies for website templates. There are only a limited
number of layouts that a website can be. All of them have been tried,
some worked and others did not. The ones that work have been turned
into templates. I do not know how many practical and working layouts
there are but I would not be surprised if it is more then 7. All the
websites out there are based on around 7 basic layouts.
There is absolutely no reason for you to create a website from
scratch. Why reinvent the wheel? Save yourself a lot of time and
effort by getting a template. A simple layout template is all you
need. For example, just a header on the top for a banner, a top
navigation bar, side panels for sub navigation bar and a footer - this
is a basic layout.
Most templates come with a CSS file. In a matter of minutes you can
have a unique website. Change the backgrounds, change the font size,
color, make a side panel bigger. In ten minutes you have your own
website.
On the other hand if you start with a blank page then you will be
spend a few hours fiddling around just to get the basic layout. And
once you are finished, you will discover that your website in no
different then a template.
A template does not mean that your website will be that same as
everybody else's. Using a template means that you save hours of work
that you could of spent making your website unique.