Dear Webmaster
I would like to take the time to thank you for your free templates. I downloaded the gaming template and it is so cool it is going to help my game site. I have just one question for you. Can you please tell me how I code the search box so my vistors can find my games by searching my site or were I can find a code for it?
Thank you,
Ron

PS as soon as I get the template uploaded on my site I will send you a link to it.

Hi Ron,

Thanks very much for the kind remarks about the template. I hope template serves you well.

The search box is there in case you have an existing database you can connect to. How the search box is coded would depend on the type of database installed on your web server. There are also search services hosted offsite that can return results from your website. The easiest thing to do to make your site searchable is to create a Google Custom Search Engine with Google Co-op.

You can even see your search stats with a Google CSE.

I use Google Custom Search on Clickfire at the top right of every page. You can even use it with Google AdSense if you have an account. Let me know how it works, if you try it.

Thanks again,

Emory

This metallic web template is one of my favorite designs and I assure you that I have spent long periods of time starring at her silvery white metallic finish. This is also the last of six free website templates released for the Clickfire 10th anniversary. I have a feeling more free web templates are ahead.

Here are two more free website templates for all you site builders out there. These are styled as a directory template and a music template. Guess which is which :)  Most any designing webmaster should be able to find a use for these templates, the anti table crowd excepted. Download, customize and enjoy. Oh and please comment here too!

Tired of web hosting reviews? Well, can I interest you in a free web hosting template then? I promise it is truly free and no pixels were harmed or code malformed during its creation.  This template is valid xhtml 1.0 and css with original photshop psd inside. It is commented and contains SEO elements. You can see from the screen cap that it is businessy but also kind of gothic for lack of a better term–just in time for Halloween.

The web hosting template is part of a batch of free website templates we decided to give away in the countdown to our 10 year anniversary. Customize, enjoy, save precious time and build yourself a cool web hosting site. Post your comments below por favor.

Free Template anyone?

The August free website template is now live!

We rustled up some free website templates to give away as part of the Clickfire ten year anniversary countdown that climaxes this December. This month’s theme is gaming, a subject very dear to my heart and an intergral part of my Internet life. Customize, enjoy, save time and build out something cool. Post comments on the free gaming website template below.

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. Read more of this post »

It’s a beautiful, graphically optimized, fully validating sunny fall day outside. Why am I ablogging?

The new Clickfire site design is finished!

Some things about the new design that I really like are:

The Logo - Even though the previous logo went through some serious obsessive compulsive iterations, I am convinced that the new one is fresher, more cheerful and colorful. I admit an attachment to the heavy handed mouse and fire components, but I believe the less overt new one is going to better serve.

Code Improvements - No more table containers. To my surprise, I was able to drop the content into the CSS divs in my favorite WYSIWYG editor (the name begins with a “F,” not a “D,” by the way. I have cleaned up most of the old pages, some dating back years ago to when I first started learning CSS. The new pages are in XHTML and tend to have a better chance at validating. A few hybrid pages are still floating around.

Colors - It’s goodbye green, beige and black and hello red, green blue on white. I got complaints about the previous colors being to loud and this finally sank in. I struggled with going to a white background because white just plain hurts my eyes as do fluorescent lights and flash grenades. Toning down the contrast and brightness in my LCD monitor pretty much gets rid of the pain. I hope the new color scheme will improve the user experience. From what I’ve read, dark text on white backgrounds seems to be the preferred user interface scheme. Read more of this post »

In case you’ve noticed the lack of tools due to becoming antiquated or unsupported, I’ve added a few “new” web design tools for the Web 1.0 crowd (which includes me, I suppose).

• Table Maker simply let’s you play around with table HTML code and make a quick table.
• Drop Down Menu Tool shows you how to make an HTML menu with drop down links for your web site.
• A Pop-Up Generator that creates a user initiated pop-up maker (the good kind). Sometimes you may want to encourage your web site visitors to remain on the same page. This gives them a chance to bring up a little window without leaving.

These are nothing new of course, but as Clickfire expands, I want to include the bread and butter as well as the hot sauce.

I’ve been noodling around and making custom buttons for the new Google Toolbar buttons for beta version 4 of the Google toolbar for Internet Explorer 5.5+. In Google’s words, a custom toolbar button is “a push button that you can add to the Google Toolbar that can have custom navigation, search, send and update capabilities.” Custom buttons offer cute and convenient possibilities of keeping visitors connected to your web site.

The Cute
The buttons are the same size (16 X16) as the standard for favicons. Webmasters can use their existing favicons or create one to use as the button image (must take the simple step to convert it to base64 encoding with a tool like this).

The Possibilities
What I really dig about the custom toolbar buttons is that Google lets developers add a search component to narrow a search to a particular site by entering text in the search field and clicking a button. For example, if you don’t find what you’re looking for on your favorite search engine, narrow your search to Slashdot by clicking the button (assuming you added it) and the query goes to Slashdot.org and displays results. The Whois.sc button shows you the the Whois data for the page you are viewing in one click–very useful. My favorite feature is the ability to create a button that displays your site’s rss feed with each entry refreshing in a drop down list. So, fans of your site or blog can see when you’ve updated something.

Essentially, to create your own custom Google Toolbar button, all you need do is look at the Google example in the api documentation and just substitute your own site info. Then, save it to an XML file and link the button. The below button for the Clickfire site displays the most recent articles and reviews.

The link code to install the button is this:

http://toolbar.google.com/buttons/add?url=http://www.clickfire.com/googlebutton.xml.

Substitute your own site URI and XML file name.

Here is the Google Toolbar Button code I used for the Clickfire Blog (http://www.clickfire.com/googlebutton2.xml). Substitute your own info for the circled items:

- Add the Clickfire button | - Add Clickfire Blog button | - Add Clickfire News button

Happy buttoning.