What do you think of this template?

I'm starting a site that is a directory of resources on hydrogen cars/fuel cells/production etc... I'm looking for a simple template to save me some time, what does everyone this of this one:

http://www.4templates.com/view/sear...vlMc7qvqjBfyrqontINadmwagr3-wRZzhC/1/EV0001BL


I'm tired of going through freebies... anyone have any nature related templates?

~Brian

 

Personally, I think there's too much blue ..

For nature, I think you should go for something that has green, white and yellow as colors. Blue is okay, but the template has too much of it.

 

That one is nice.

Just my 2C

Good luck with the site.

 

Nice layout design, but yeah, kinda really blue. Plus, if you're going to buy this template, does that mean you don't have the skills to further change it about, add boxes, etc? If so, then what's there might be too limited for a whole site.

 

With enough time I'm fine with a WYSIWYG editor and photoshop... I was hoping to go through my bookmarks and ad links, write some content, place some adsense ads, submit to some directories and let it go... figured I'd put my extensive hydrogen links to use, thats all...

 

Well, why don't you do something along the lines of what I'm about to tell you. It will save you a lot of time. Believe it or not, learning some simple HTML or even stuff like PHP/ASP, would probably take a lot less time than pulling a google and combing the web for every single template site.

For what you want to do it's almost impossible to find exactly what you want. Why waste time with that when you could design your own in a few hours?

Here's what you do.

1. Download a trial of Macromedia DreamWeaver MX (or 8 when it comes out)
2. Don't even bother with the manual
3. Go to www.w3schools.com
4. Click on the "Learn HTML" Link
5. Use that tutorial for 20 mins and you will know basic HTML
6. Open up DreamWeaver and play around, maybe read up on how to make templates.
7. Once you have all of your links and images in place with your text:
8. Go back to www.w3schools.com
9. Click on "Learn CSS"
10. In around 30-40 minutes you will be creating Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) which allows you to do anything from customize links to creating Dynamic Menus!

DreamWeaver offers a user-freindly interface with both a Design and Code mode, so this should be quite easy.

Once you have all your pages up you should find out the following info:
1. What server you will be uploading to
2. Whether it supports PHP and MySQL
3. if it does then go back to W3Schools and read the PHP tutorial
if not
1. Find out whether your server supports ASP which is bassically PHP but Microsoft
2. Click on "Learn ASP" on W3Schools

----PHP and ASP are gaurenteed to make your site look alot better, and provide some non-static content----
NOTE: You can't use PHP and ASP together unless you are a very advanced programmer on a great server, so only use one.


If you have any questions pm me.

Hope I helped!
Richie

 

a little too blue I think

 

It looks good IMO.

 

Looks good--professional, like a real template site.

 

nice layout

 

Cool template , best suited to seo or business type website

 

Yes, the color too strong. IMHO, better stick to softer color. 4templates.com website itself has a nice color scheme: soft blue and a lot of white backgrounds.

 

very nice template

good luck with site.

 

This is a good template, I think perfect for the industry it will be based on.

Altough I do agree with richieg100 on creating your own - I am on that path he is suggesting.

 

All my sites so far, I've designed from scratch - basically just a few cell tables, put colors to it, and see what's the best color scheme.

I've tried using other people's template but it was quite a hairsplitting experience when you open the file into your HTML editor. It may take you 15-30 minutes just to get a gist how the table-cell-div works in other people's site.

 

One of the factors thats keeping me away from templates.

 

I like it very much actually, blue is THE favorite color of most people and looks very inviting. I also like the touch of nature of this design if it fits the topic of your site. The problem with this design is that it looks perfect in one size and probably looks crappy in all other sizes, i.e. it's pretty much resolution locked. You could make a fixed 800x600 window, but that might look a bit strange on a 1400x1050 screen. You could also try to modify the clouds so they can repeat after a width of 800 or 1024 without making the background looking cropped.