How important is the graphic design and visual elements of your site going to be?
Get inspired – You’ve got the entire web to draw design inspiration from. Even if you’re not a designer or a creative individual, you can look online and find some sites that inspire you. It’s going to easier for a designer to build that perfect look for you if you provide him or her some examples of sites you like. If you’re using a CMS theme, you may find it yourself and be able to install it in minutes. Do some surfing and find some designs you like and get inspired.
Should you use a pre-existing theme or buy a template?
The answer to this question depends on what your website is going to built on. If you’re using an open source CMS like WordPress or Drupal, there are hundreds to thousands of themes available that will allow you to develop a professional looking site.
In the past website templates still had a somewhat “generic” look and feel, but with the amazing popularity of open source content management systems, you can now find themes in a huge variety of looks and even ones for specific industries and design motifs. If you want retro, there’s a theme for that. Want sleek and corporate blue? There is a theme for that. Just like the Apple iPhone application store, if you want . . , there is a theme for that.
You will probably want to modify the theme to fit your specific website needs. If set up perfectly, users of your website will not know that they are looking at an off-the-shelf theme . Pick a good theme. HTML (hyper text markup language) and CSS (cascading style sheets) are easy to learn, but difficult to master and if you have no experience with them, and editing the advanced layout of the CMS ‘theme’ (set of templates and images that makeup the pages) will not be easy for the novice. You will be limited to minor changes unless you hire a web designer to assist you. However, professional designers can do this in an hour or two and make lots of changes. There are also recently some very automated themes for WordPress that allow the novice user to change many things with no knowledge at all using check-box menus.
If you're still looking for a good team to take your project to the next level, the authors of the 2010 Rothman Guide to Building Successful Websites are available for free, no obligation, creative consultations that you will not forget! Call 1-866-945-1113 or e-mail your contact info to info@socialmediasystems.