Artist Web Design : Website Themes and Templates
In the search…
for the perfect website design, there are many elements that make a website worth a viewer’s consideration. After first optimizing it for the search engines to have it appear on the 1st or 2nd page of Google, Yahoo & Bing’s search results, (ensuring that you receive the highest amount of traffic); as well as making it as functional & easy to navigate as possible…then it’s all about the look & design.
Having the right website design can be a deciding factor in whether someone continues to stay on your site. Features, such as shopping carts & easy navigation when clicking on menus, images, & buttons, although primarily functional…need to be attractive, eye-catching, and they should blend & have a sense of cohesiveness with the colors and other design elements; such as backgrounds, headers & fonts. Choosing the right theme or template is key to showcasing your companies products & services. It is important however, to understand the differences between themes & templates, and the various types that are available.
A Theme can be described as a ‘book cover’…and as the old adage proclaims; “You can’t judge a book by it’s cover”…or CAN you?
Web Developers understand, that high performance websites are all about the functionality rather than the “pretty colors”. In this case, ‘form follows function’… or, in other words; “A website is really only as good as the features that can actually be used”. They say that colors & graphics can be aesthetically pleasing to some of the people, some of the time; however, the more important functional features are what actually determine whether a particular website will be effective. Considering the appearance of your website is fine but also keep in mind the usability and functionality in order for a developer to be able to provide you with professional, realistic, website solutions.
Web Developers are not suggesting that appearance is not an essential element of a websites potential success, but how your website works needs to be considered as equally important.
A website TEMPLATE is a collection of different style attributes and elements that can be used as a starting point and be modified according to your particular preferences in terms of visual appeal. These include: colors, fonts, backgrounds, headers, footers & images as well as text. These elements are arranged in a style sheet, and the characteristics of each element are formatted by descriptive language regarding their function, size, color, font-style, etc. It can referenced by the elements within in a template’s header to manage these different style items, which can be easily edited at a future time.
A website THEME can be described as functional as well as styled parts of a website that are combined to modify the functional as well as the visual aspects of your website. A website theme can be applied to various content management systems, (CMS); and other types of online applications. The dynamic features of a particular website are created by a website’s source code, which can be implemented with a variety of programming languages, like ASP.NET and PHP. The style sheet is also included in a website theme, however; it is separate from the source code. The elements contained in each, are not affected by changes made to the other.