I make my own templates for my websites but the problenm is that I made a lot of them and they all don't look appealing to me. So I guess I'm going to look for a ready made template online and instead of buying it make a similar template. I don't like using templates because I'd have to pay for one and I want an original layout for my sites.

It really depends, if you use a template and you KNOW you can make it yourself then thats no problem.

But if you are using a template with no skills then give the maker the credit, dont try and pass it on as your own work or to make your friends think yr cool.

Personally i take the idea's / concepts from other templates and combine them to make my own desgins. Wether it be flash / animated or just normal images.

When you designing one from scratch its much better than a template that is given to you. My reason is because for one you made the site with your own creativity, and another reason is because you will further progress your skills in web development if you do it from scratch. And each webpage you make by yourself, your production of webpages will be of better quality ten folds then the template that you find else where...

lonebyrd,

Create your css file in a simple text editor like notepad and save it as a "css" file extension.
ie: style_file_name.css
Upload into your hosting space in the same directory as the html files.
Inside the head tags of the html file, include the link to the css file .

This is the format for an xhtml 1.0 doc type strict which can be found at the w3c site (I think that's where I snagged it from). If IE gives you any problems, try deleting the line before the DocType in order the change to/from standard/quirks mode. (I can never remember which one is which). But that sometimes is an issue.
Are you saying that the linking doesn't work? or are you saying that the style doesn't work as planned?
If the link is failing, then include the css in the files by using a style tag. Like this:

If the style doesn't work, then that is a whole other can of worms.

Post back here (on a new topic in the HTML sub-forum) and we'll either assist you or point you in another direction.

Hope this helps.

Mods/Admin : Merge or Move as required. Thanks.

CMS is the best thing to use if you want a good-looking site without too much effort. It usually has a wide range of templates and you can customize the content arrangement. It also has a great way of controling the content - much more easy then a html template.

I use and create my own design. Why copy when you have talent to imagine and produce new ideas? There's nothing more beautiful even with the ugliest but original artwork.

I've never used templates. Designing the site layout, picking the colours and doing testing is the most fun part of doing websites. That's why I never have felt the need to use ready templates.

Full CMS's have their benefits with good integration of the different parts of the site, and naturally you have to take care of lot less things. But then again they tend to limit your options. I've never used a CMS, I rather try to integrate my own systems to forums and so on.

Making your own template would also be good because you don't have to have those copywrites on your site, even though, they do sometimes look a bit plainer and the premade ones look very good

Hello,
I think that using your own design is much better because it's much more stisfying when you look at it and it looks more original.
It takes quite a bit of time to get it to a perfect level and it takes a lot of hard work to create your own graphics and other stuff but it works for me!

This post has been edited by Arnie K: Mar 12 2006, 03:29 PM

What I meant was I got skills and I can make any page I see from ready-made templates. But hwat I can't do are the ones I can see in my mind. I can't project it through my own made templates. I think that If I continue to copy those ready-made templates, I will be just a copier and have no original creation, but if I use those templates in order to let my creativity grow, then I'll learn how to project my own from my mind.