Site Template

[antandsons]

I want to have a professional redesign of my site, of course without paying money. I wanted to model my site after redherring.com which looks very top notch. How can I go about this, without really copying their HTML but still getting the same effect?

[TCH-Rob]

Professional and free almost never go hand in hand. You can look around for free templates that come close to that site but pther than that I cannot think of anything else. Of course you do not want to copy the code because you run into copyright questions.

[abinidi]

I'd recommend that you start by viewing that site and making a list of the things that you like. In that list, I'd be very specific. Do you like the color scheme? (If so, list it, and list the colors that you like.) Do you like the 3-column layout? Do you like the width of the text block? The fonts used? What, specifically do you like about them?

 

Then, I'd go to some other sites, and I'd do the same analysis. Find out what it is that you like--specifically--about those sites, and then you will be better able to design your own site.

 

Now I'm never going to say that you shoud just use another person's code without permission, but you ARE allowed to look at their code to see HOW they accomplished something. There is nothing wrong with learning from other sites. Then you go to your own site and do it yourself.

 

Like Rob said, you'll have a hard time finding somebody else to develop a professional site for you, but with some hard work of your own, you will be on the path to making your own professional site.

 

And in the forums, we're always ready and willing to help you make your site's dreams come true. So when you get stuck, be sure to holler our direction!

 

Good luck.

[Deverill]

There are some good/free website templates out there. I found one I am currently implementing at www.oswd.org/most_popular.phtml - take a look and see if any suit your needs and of course google for "free web templates" and such and peek around.

 

If you have time and desire, Paul's suggestion is, as they say, spot on and will allow you to build your toolbox of skills tremendously so don't take the easy way out if you have the time and desire to get good at making your own.

[borfast]

Try templatemonster.com, it's not free and your site will look like hundreds of others that use the same templates but it's cheap (I think... I must confess I never compared the prices for this kind of product) and many of the templates are pretty good.

Edited August 21, 2005 by borfast

[antandsons]

http://oswd.org/search.php?searchstring=st...tab=description

 

 

I am trying to upload that type of template.

 

I have started to at antandsons.com/test. I will let everyone know how this goes as I edit the template.

Edited August 21, 2005 by antandsons

[Deverill]

I just thought of another alternative and mention it more for folks reading this months down the road as you seem to have a solution you like.

 

Dreamweaver from MacroMedia has a feature where you can take an image of a website (screenshot) and it will fade it out and make a backdrop of the image. Then you can design your site "on-top" of the image. It's like tracing an original drawing - not original in itself and you may have copyright issues but it is an option.