I've seen articles (and websites) that suggest you can buy a website template and skip the expense of hiring a professional website designer. Recently, I read several testimonials from the very satisfied customers of a website template vendor that mentioned how quickly they were able to get their sites done. The template vendor commented that he/she had known people to complete their websites in around two hours.
With experiences and statements like these, it not surprising that more and acim podcast"}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":12801,"3":{"1":0},"12":0,"15":"Calibri","16":11}">acim podcast more people are attempting to build websites themselves. I think that's great in a way. For those of us who are concerned about the trends in the web industry and community, it's great to see more people becoming web oriented and involved.
However, I think there is a misunderstanding by many of these people about what a website template really is - and is not. At this point, I think it only fair that I should mention that I am a professional website designer (the person you supposedly don't need anymore). I should also mention that this is not my sole motivation for questioning this idea of templates replacing web designers. As a matter of fact, I think website templates are extremely useful. I recommend using them to my clients as a way of getting a great graphical look for their site. What I hope to convey is that template consumers need to know what they are and what they aren't getting with a template.
Consider an analogy for templates: pretty boxes for very important gifts. If you buy a pretty box, and put all the right stuff inside it - won't everybody want to open the box and use the contents? Doing it yourself will save time and money - so why not? Sounds good, and the people who wrote those testimonials would certainly think it was a good idea - right?
