Shanto, that’s a fairly big undertaking. If you don’t have the technical skills yourself at the very least you’ll probably need to get someone technical on board as a partner. Are you funding this yourself or looking for funding to support it?

Great post!

Anywho, getting back on track.

Actually, I’d have to completely disagree with you about not hiring a designer who uses templates 🙂

Reuse of libraries has always been a vital part of software development. Templates, themes and frameworks are just as important in web development – no web project should ever be started completely from scratch when there are tools like CSS Reset scripts, jQuery and MooTools available. And front end components like Twitter’s Bootstrap, and even graphic elements like icon sets can be really useful. That extends to themes and frameworks too – these can massively speed up site development – as seen in this video!

Good points but what about bespoke work like Ireland.com, why didn’t they get a template (would have been cheaper for a start!?)

Peace!

Hi Josefa,

I’ve had look and I can’t find your email in the system, so I can’t manually remove it.

In the emails you received, you should find a “Manage your subscription” link – click that and see if it works. If it doesn’t, let me know here and I’ll see if there’s something else I can do.

Cheers,
Alastair.

Hi Steven,

Thanks for the compliment!

Actually, I’d have to completely disagree with you about not hiring a designer who uses templates 🙂

Reuse of libraries has always been a vital part of software development. Templates, themes and frameworks are just as important in web development – no web project should ever be started completely from scratch when there are tools like CSS Reset scripts, jQuery and MooTools available. And front end components like Twitter’s Bootstrap, and even graphic elements like icon sets can be really useful. That extends to themes and frameworks too – these can massively speed up site development – as seen in this video!

That does not mean that pre-built themes are the only answer, nor that they are always ready to use out-of-the-box – in fact they’re almost never ready to use out of the box 🙂

Take the Twenty* themes that come bundled with WordPress – as base themes to build a nice design on top of, they are pretty awesome – but to simply use them without customising the design, they’re pretty plain looking – and I think the original creators would admit that.

I’ve recently written about creating custom WordPress themes from a custom design, and I’ve done it many times, so I’m not coming from a “premium themes are the only answer” standpoint.

I think you need to choose the right tool for the job. A good web designer will know when they need to create a theme from scratch, or when they should build on top of something pre-existing. That decision will be impacted by the design requirements, by the budget, by the site specification, the target demographic, and the timeframe for delivery (and if the deadline is in 37 minutes, I know which option I’ll be choosing!).

The mark-up you mentioned that the designer adds – well if it’s simply on top of the template price, then it’s not justified. But if the designer downloads, installs and configures what can be quite complex theme options, then I think they’re absolutely justified to charge for their time.

Using templates can work really well for many projects, and building completely from scratch works well for many more.

I think it’s super that we have all these choices available to us now – building a beautiful, accessible, responsive, standards-based website that displays consistently across multiple platforms is now a lot easier than it was a few years back.

Thanks for the comment, I think this is an interesting topic.

Cheers,
Alastair.

I use existing content management systems and designs to provide decent, affordable websites and build them quickly. I don’t hide how I do things. I can do custom design from scratch too if anyone can afford it.

Regarding the first poster’s comment about hiring a web designer, I might add to hire a designer that doesn’t use templates… as you could buy them yourself without the added markup from said “designer”.