What Is A Website Template?

Date First Published: 20th September 2022

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty: Medium

Difficulty Level: 4/10

Learn more about what a website template is in this article.

A website template, also known as a web template, is a predesigned layout made up of HTML and CSS that gives users a starting point for creating a webpage instead of building it from scratch. Website templates usually consist of everything needed to make a page, including a top navigation bar, a design, a layout, a navigation menu, a contact form, and more. CMSes, such as WordPress and Wix, provide users with website templates, allowing people without experience in web design to quickly create a webpage. Afterwards, they can replace the default text, titles, and images with their own content and rearrange the elements and their website will look fully completed. Web templates usually come free of charge, but a fee may be required for some.

Web templates may be a ZIP file download that contains all the necessary files for the template, be part of a proprietary web builder interface, such as Wix, or be included with a webpage editor program. Some users are concerned that they will not get a unique website by using a template. However, there are billions of websites on the World Wide Web and it is unlikely that a user would notice that two websites are using the same template design. It is likely that the website owner will edit all text and replace all default images with their own in order to make their website unique, making it harder to tell if someone has used a predesigned template to build their website.

Web templates might also allow users to drag and drop elements into their page, such as images, videos, galleries, and logos, representing what the page would look like if it was live. If users want extra features, they can install plugins on their websites. Whilst website templates are a good option for people that don't have experience in web design, users cannot make changes to their pages with the same level of control and customisation that a hand-coded page offers, which is why most companies decide to hand-code their websites or use a WYSIWYG interface, such as Adobe Dreamweaver.

However, some sites, such as W3schools provide fully customisable predesigned templates that users can make changes to with exactly the same level of control as if it was hand-coded. These are known as standalone templates that allow for modification to any part of the webpages. Website templates that are part of proprietary web builder interfaces, such as Wix are not standalone, meaning that users cannot move their template to another platform or website builder. An example of a WordPress site built from a template can be seen here.