Free Website Templates

To the lazy, the budget conscious, the busy, the bored

A while back I had some web templates done up with the thought of selling them as part of a project that never materialized. Recently I started thinking about these templates just sitting there on my hard-drive not benefitting anyone. The more I thought about this, the more it bothered me. Not that they are the sexiest designs or most Web 2.0 looking graphics that you will see.  They are simple, HTML table templates–not done with divs. But, they are what I would consider professional grade and not bad looking in my opinion.  So, I decided to post some of the good ones so you can download and use them if you want. The designer who originally put the templates together for me didn’t code them with valid HTML/CSS, so I had to go back into the code and tidy them up. I have created a free website templates section where these and any future templates will be posted. Here are the first templates:

Really, why are you doing this?

It hurts to give these away, but it also feels good. There is an indescribable blessing that I’ve enjoyed over the years of having given away free stuff on Clickfire. As a Christian believer, I can’t help but recall scriptures like “it is more blessed to give than receive” and “give and it shall be given unto you.” Giving can be addictive, especially when site visitors write in and say how much they appreciate it or how something you gave away has helped them do their job easier.

A less dignified reason also comes to mind. There are one or two large template download sites that annoy me for reasons I don’t want to talk about. I will say that I have personally purchased web templates from one particular popular template site and found them painfully difficult to edit because of graphical slugs and other code anomalies, probably a result of someone trying to design a template to make a quick buck. So here am I having bought a template that is supposedly going to save time and money because I should be able to just change the “company name” text and throw this little baby online in minutes. Hours later I am starring into my screen wondering why I didn’t just design the site from scratch. To my recollection, none of the templates that I have used from this large template site have ever validated. Many seem heavy on Flash and not at all designed with SEO in mind. Oh, and the prices. Exclusive licenses can be 40 times the price of the regular cheap templates that they resell ad infinitum.

There is actually one more reason I am doing this, but I can’t tell you yet. Hint: this is a big year, er, decade for Clickfire.

I like customizing templates for my own projects and am not ashamed to say so. Sometimes I’d honestly prefer to play a PC game than design a custom website, as much as I might enjoy it. Here’s a secret if you haven’t guessed already: I am not an outstanding web designer. I get impatient and tend to take shortcuts. I am actually color deficient as well.

These free website templates should be an option if you need to get a quick site up and running that looks decent. I truly hope that you get some benefit from these. I will update this post and the newsletter as more templates are published. Please post your impressions of the templates here. Are they usable? Did you find any bugs? Do you like them or are they a waste of time? Be honest, I can take it.