What's Wrong with Web Page Templates?
Nothing! Web page templates are great in principle. If they work well, they should save you literally days of design & production time, leaving you to focus on the really important aspects of web design (see my article on these).
I don't know if you've ever tried to use a web site template you've purchased online. Pretty much everyone I've spoken to who's done so has said they found bought web templates so flaky to use that they've ended up spending as much time trying to fix the template as they would have done to design & build a new site.
What I think web designers and developers really need are templates that are clean & smart, for sure, but that you can use for a range of uses and a wide variety of content. They should also be easy to customise, because no one wants to pay for a web site and then run into another one looking just like it the next week!
So you need a starting point for a great web site that will work around your content (not the other way round!), and that you can be sure will look and work well in all browsers in minutes - not days.
I'd like to give you a sneak preview of a new range of standards-compliant CSS templates we're working on that not only look good but have been specifically designed from the ground up to be incredibly robust and flexible.
Clicss.com - Web Page Templates that Actually Work!
Clicss templates are actually designed for you to implement really easily, but also to tweak, rearrange, adapt, and modify with the minimum of fuss.
Here are a few of the really interesting features:
Template Features in Detail
Multiple Layout and Navigation Options
You remember I said Clicss templates are really flexible? If you want a one-column design, or two columns with the thin one on the left, or the other way round, or three columns with one thin one on each side, or even two thin ones then a fat one - a Clicss template will support all of these!
And you're not limited to one navigation option either. When you get a Clicss template, you can put your main nav (yes it's an unordered list) in the top section (where it may be nav buttons or tabs), or you might put it in a side column, where it will be styled to suit the placement.
Your sub-nav / second-level nav options are just as good. If you put the subnav in the side column, no problem, but just move the list into the main nav option and hey presto! You have instant CSS-powered drop-down navigation links.
Styles for all HTML Elements
Because Clicss templates have been designed and built by the web professionals at Scratchmedia, where we champion the highest standards of production, all your regular (x)HTML elements are covered by default.
If you want a form with label/field pairings, stick them in as a definition list and your form will look great first time.
Need a table to show data? Just stick it in, and it will fit in perfectly with the style of the template. Just add class="addhovers" in the <table> tag and you get instant stylish hover effects too!
Blockquotes? Covered! Lists? Got 'em! Basically, any combination of HTML tags should just drop into a Clicss template and look really smart.
Selection of Visual Components
In addition to the stock basic (x)HTML tags, Clicss templates also include a number of useful combos, like Question & Answer forms, customer testimonials, thumbnail images etc. All you need to do is use the super-simple HTML markup and classnames provided in the User Guide.
Professionally Designed & Built
All Clicss templates are designed and produced by me (Ben) and Dan Johnson at Scratchmedia, so you can be sure they're fully tested to work on all main browsers, flexible and robust, with clean, semantic, standards-compliant xHTML markup, and well-organised stylesheets.
Easy Javascript Tricks
I already mentioned you can add hovers to your tables just by adding a single classname to the table tag.
Clicss templates also support cute client-side form validation. How hard is it to add class="validate val-nonblank" or "validate val-email" ?
It's great practice to show Questions & Answers on all relevant pages (rather than splitting them all off onto one general FAQs page), as it benefits SEO as well as providing a better user experience.
Your Clicss template will let you add Q&A in moments. What's more, your visitors will be able to browse all the questions and just click a question to reveal the answer (using a neat Javascript slide-out). Again, there's no coding required.
Great user guide and a support forum
Your web page template from Clicss.com comes with a thorough user guide that explains all the options available with your template and how to achieve them (which is really easy).
If you need more help, just ask the creators of the templates over at Scratch Web Design Forums / Clicss, where you'll get quality support from the experts.
Request a New Template Style
We're very keen to create new templates that people really want to use, so if you need a particular style or genre, please let us know.
You don't have to be an HTML/CSS expert to use these templates, because we've put in all the heavy thinking up-front. Professionally-made web page templates should be really really clean and simple to use or modify, and that's what we've done for you.