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Brunner
Brunner

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How to build a professional website template

During my free time, I build website templates for sale. Now there is a difference between a 'template' and a 'theme'.

A 'template' is like a website built with html5, that allows the buyer to change the pictures and text on it to suit their needs.

A 'theme' is more like a website built on top of wordpress ( wordpress theme).

LETS GET INTO IT

  1. Get feedback: If you are building your templates to sell on someone's market place, post your template's link to their forum and ask for feedback. If they say its okay, you then submit your template.

If you submit your template before asking for feedback, they might not accept you template and will not give any reasonable reason why ( some template marketplaces do not help people to know how the template should look like to appear professional)

  1. validate your source code: it is interesting that most websites you see online do not pass the html validation test.

You can validate your html code on validator.w3.org, which is the official html validator and its free. Or on freeformatter.com (Note: I do not have anything to do with any link I post here, any link I post here is because I only used it to do my own template building )

  1. Live host a template demo: clients interested in your template, will want to see how it works in order to make a decision.

Its not necessary paying for a server to just host a template demo. The solution is to create a github account and host it your account. The hosting is free and guarantees uptime.

4.Creating a template preview and thumbnail:
I have observed that almost all the photo editing softwares and websites do not allow you to manually choose the width and height of an image you want to resize.
When you choose the width, it automatically chooses the height for you and vice versa. Even Gimp ( an open source photo editor ) fails to do that without having to crop the image or change some settings.

The only solution I found for this problem is photoresizer.com
They do a good job of allowing you to change the dimensions of the image any way you want.

Thank you for your time.

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