How
to customize web templates on your own to create unique websites
Web templates are raw materials that need to be refurnished/edited
to be published online. Editing web-templates could include content
insertion, graphic insertion/modification, inserting company logo,
changing styles, changing links, changing flash images etc.
Editing is quite easy but in case you feel otherwise you can always
make use of template customization services that most template providers
offer at affordable costs.
Some template providers like (http://www.buytemplates.net) offer
affordable customization services irrespective of where you actually
purchased the template from. This article discusses the techniques
that you can use to edit your web templates effectively to create
unique looking websites.
Editing website templates effectively
For editing web templates all you would require is an html editor
like Dreamweaver, Photoshop, FrontPage or Go-live. Most of these
html editors are WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) kind and
have a user friendly interface. You can do two types of editing
to your web-templates. One is content editing and the other is graphics
editing.
I) Editing the content of your web templates
The template provider would have supplied you with an ‘index.html’
file along with your template. This is the file that you would require
for editing content of your templates. You can edit content using
a text editor or an html editor software program.
Editing using text editors
Editing using text editors is the best possible way to edit your
templates. This will ensure that your html coding remains clean
and no unnecessary junk code is added. But of course you need to
be some what conversant with Html to hand code your templates. Notepad
is probably the most well-known of all text editors. Other than
Notepad some other good and advanced text editors are editpad (editpadpro.com),
NoteTab Light (notetab.com), and arachnophilia (arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/index.html).
Editing using Html editors
Making use of an html editor is probably the easiest way of editing
templates and would be useful to those who are not conversant with
html. Most html editors are user friendly and have an easy-to-use
interface. Some well known html web template editors are Dreamweaver,
FrontPage and Go-live. To edit content of the template, all that
you would need to do is load the index.html file in an editor. After
that you can simply cut and paste your content where the dummy content
is provided and you are done. Adding content would also include
changing links, adding content to tags and changing image sources
if required.
Handy tips for content editing
1.) Make sure to change the title of all pages. The title can be
a keyword or words that are most repeated in your content. It can
also be a description of your webpage. For instance you can use
‘Florida tourism’ as the title for a webpage related
to tourism in Florida.
2.) Change alt text of images and keep the alter text as a keyword.
Search engines don’t read images but they do ready the Alt
texts. For instance you can use the tag ‘Florida beach’
for a Florida beach image.
3.) Make sure to add proper anchor text to all your links. Anchor
texts are given special importance in search engines.
4.) Give proper headings to all your pages. Heading can contain
specific keywords. Headings are given using ‘h1, h2, h3 …..
h6’ tags. Text with-in heading tags are given more value by
search bots.
5.) Be sure to check for spelling mistakes, grammatical errors,
broken links and misspellings before loading the site
7.) Provide contact information.
II.) Editing images and graphics
Editing images would involve changing image colors, add/remove
image layers, add/change text used in images etc. In order to make
changes to the images used in the web template you would need to
use the PSD file. Almost all template providers would supply you
with a PSD file (although some may charge you extra for the file).
PSD file is basically a layered file that is created using Adobe
PhotoShop. This file is compatible with many graphic editing programs.
Some good programs that can be used to edit PSD files are Jasc Paint
Shop Pro 7, Ulead PhotoImpact 7 & 8, ImageReady and of course
Photoshop. For more information on PSD files you can visit adobe.com.
In case you don’t have access to any of the above mentioned
software programs for editing the templates, you may request your
web template provider to give you BMP files instead of PSD files.
A BMP file is a high quality bitmap image file that can be edited
using any image editing software program.
Handy tips
1.) Change the color of images to suite and enhance your text visibility
2.) If needed you can also replace images used in the templates
to add your own professional images. (One good website from where
you can get professional images is ‘gettyimages.com’)
3.) Editing the styles of a template
CSS style sheets are the ones that allow you to make changes to
the style of the webpage like changing font color, line and paragraph
spacing, font size, link color etc. Style sheets are useful as they
allow you to make changes to many WebPages by altering one document.
CSS can be edited using any Html editor or text editor. Although
there are some specialized programs available that are meant specifically
for editing CSS Stylesheets like ‘TopStyle’ (bradsoft.com).
There are many web template providers who offer internal style
sheets or multiple font styles. It is difficult to edit internal
style sheets and therefore is not recommended. Always make sure
to go for template providers who offer you with external CSS Style
Sheets.
Handy tips
1.) Make sure to use contrasting text and background colors
2.) Make sure to use same font type through out a webpage. Making
use of different font types can make reading difficult. Arial and
veranda are best suited for online reading.
3.) Never use justification for your text as it can make reading
difficult.
4.) Provide a site map
Quality tutorials to help you with HTML
If you are not familiar with html/CSS and need some start up lessons
then there are plenty of free resources available over the internet
that will allow you to do just that. Some of the best ones are ‘w3cschools.com’
and ‘webmonkey.com’. W3cschools offers the best tutorials
for html where as webmonkey offers the best tutorial for CSS Style-sheets
(just type ‘Mulder's Stylesheets Tutorial’ in a search
engine like google or yahoo! to reach directly to the tutorial page).
For getting knowledge about web usability you can refer to ‘(http://www.usability.gov/guidelines)’.
For researching keywords for your website content you can refer
wordtracker.com or overtune.com.
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