Philosophical views on using templates for web design

Now, this question really bothers me a lot- using templates, shouldn't I or should I? In this blog post I'd like to take a break from technical stuff like data storage and I'd like to give you my philosophical (a word that I use when I'm not scientifically talking) views on using templates and I will also mention some of them.


Now, first of all, in case you thought that Stronia wasn't being updated from the last blog post from Friday, 13 June please check out the walkthroughs section. We have been working hard to compile the best sources from the internet while giving an insight into the topic of discussion. We've released one walkthrough and soon will released the second one.

So, is it okay to use templates?

I have worked on many websites before including big projects like search engines and I've always thought that if I used a template like Bootstrap or something else to reduce the time spent on designing the website, I wouldn't be original and people wouldn't like it. I also felt that people would think that I couldn't design a simple search engine page and thus I used a template. And I would want to emphasize on how wrong I was.

Well, to give you a feel for reality, let's picture that you're building a search engine, lets call it noodle. Now, noodle.com's search functionality is completely built in PHP. Now, you want to create a beautiful website for your search engine. Now, let's picture two alternate universes, one in which you just used a template, saved a lot of time and you website has a lot of traffic owing to its beautiful design; and another one where you tried your best at a beautiful design couldn't get to what you wanted but are at least proud that you did what you did on your own. What would you prefer?

Well, I would definitely use a template as I get brilliant design with little or no modifications. And so should you, instead of wasting time on building a template from scratch.

The bigger picture

Now, even if you're the world's most popular search engine like the future me or a blogger like the present me, no one is going to say anything if you use a template! If you're a blogger like the present me, you can say "Hey, this is a blog and my main focus is to provide quality content to users no to worry about templates, so I'm going to use templates!". Or If you're the world's most popular search engine like the future me, then you can say, "Hey, this is a search engine and our main focus is to fetch information from the internet and give it to you, not to worry about templates". Well, every kind of a website can actually say that, right? Well, of course, not template websites. But you get the point, right?