DIY Template Sites and the Crap They Produce

There is this atti­tude on the web that quan­tity is more impor­tant than qual­ity. I say rub­bish and pop­py­cock to that (and I’m not even British). There are count­less web­sites that tout their abil­ity to take you from zero expe­ri­ence to hav­ing a web­site in min­utes. Does it seem strange that these sites never say any­thing about hav­ing a “good” web­site? I don’t under­stand how peo­ple can look at the tem­plate sites they visit and have any desire to make a purchase.

Take, for instance, this web­site which is for a 55+ com­mu­nity in Florida called Chulav­ista Land­ings. Before you go and start with the hate mail about how this is a retire­ment com­mu­nity, I’m a bas­tard for mak­ing fun of it and what not, it must be assumed that the man­age­ment of the com­mu­nity is younger and more web savvy. The point is not really to make fun of this site in par­tic­u­lar (though, I will any­way), but to point out the fail­ings of one size fits all tem­plate web­sites that can be put up in “60 sec­onds” by anyone.

Danc­ing palm trees. How quaint..

The site uses a god-awful float­ing heart back­ground, and weird red boxes for nav­i­ga­tion. The wavy palm trees and spin­ning fin­ger point­ing at the “Homes For Sale” link are a nice touch, but the flash text that does this goofy flyby and the accom­pa­ny­ing bad waves sound is the king suck here. It’s even fun­nier to see the manager’s blog (in a dark, mor­bid sort of way). With­out going into too much detail, it’s a wel­come back mes­sage sur­rounded on both sides by obits.

I’m not going to link to the tem­plate pusher (because, lets face it, it’s a lot like drugs in that you pay money for some­thing that makes you feel good tem­porar­ily but serves no pur­pose in the long term). I’d rather let you dig on your own (hint, look in the footer of the linked site). They offer “A Web­site” in 60 sec­onds for $1 a month. Let’s see…

You can look at exam­ples prior to mak­ing your pur­chase, but you don’t know what their def­i­n­i­tion of “a web­site” actu­ally is. Lets assume that you find them by click­ing in the footer of an exist­ing site. Why on earth would you make a pur­chase? I have searched high and low and not one site with that link looks even close to OK. What I’ve always found fas­ci­nat­ing is the artis­tic types (you know, the peo­ple who should know bet­ter) who can look at these things and think any­thing other than “crap”. They have a sam­ples page, and all I can say is, I’m not sold.

Here’s a tip. If you want a site to look like a pro­fes­sional designed it, look at pro­fes­sional design. If what you have doesn’t look sim­i­lar, start over. Some exam­ples… Matt Brett (who’s web­site is impres­sive, but for some rea­son won’t load at the time of this writ­ing), May­hem Stu­dios, Adam Mar­tin, Luke Larsen, Arron Lock, Mar­ius Roosendaal and a host of oth­ers (I just fol­low these guys on Twit­ter, so they made the list).

I really respect design­ers, but I don’t have much love for push­ers. It doesn’t mat­ter what they push, they still do a dis­ser­vice to the world. Just say no to crap templates.

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