Template Designs

Hi everyone

I have recently been around some of the many wordpress theme sites and saw the massive range of sites available, the vast majority are very professional and look great. I then looked around for templates for some of the other software out there, and whether it's for joomla, drupal, opencart, magento etc etc there are thousands out there. I then turned to templates for other wysiwyg software such as serif's webplus and again there are many websites selling templates for it.

However for xara there are a handful of templates available and I am sure that there must be demand for them, I personally like to create my sites from scratch but can see that someone with not much design experience or the time would prefer starting from a template. So the question arises, what if I offered a website where someone new to xara webdesigner could purchase professional templates which would not look out of place on a professional web designers portfolio, would there be a demand.

I would ask you to please look at the sites below as well as some of my posts on this sites web design forum to view my work and let me know if the service could be of use.

http://www.azizcatering.co.uk/

http://www.malikhalls.com/

http://www.balti-house.com/

http://www.conservatorywindowtinting.com/

http://www.designerflooring.biz/

http://www.signsdirect.co.uk/

http://www.peugeotbreakers.biz/


thanks in advance.

Aridzone started a templates site, but it isn't there anymore. Don't know whether that is to do with lack of demand or not

Perhaps some sort of advertising would be the order of the day - maybe I could ask the guys at xara to perhaps list my services and those of others on the community page, many other software service companies do this, for instance http://www.ecwid.com/connect/ , at the end of the day it is about showing the capabilities of the software and adding a little extra service.

I have had a few people, who are new to the software contacting me about help with designing a site and there are many posts on the forum of new users who seem to be using the templates as a starting point.

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...maybe I could ask the guys at xara to perhaps list my services and those of others on the community page...

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Yeh but they sell their own templates packs don't forget ;)

Yes, you're right of course, but still, choice is a fine thing. Would like to know what the community think.

Would it be possible to have the templates on the forum somehow?

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Would it be possible to have the templates on the forum somehow?

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Doubtful. I tried to sell .xar files and fills etc. and I am only allowed to have a link to my Sunwings.info site in my signature.

Maybe they could be in the XaraXone shareware. But I don't know.

I'm not trying to be a killjoy Sketch, honest, but Xara are unlikely to sanction selling templates directly from TG or the XaraXone. Your sites are excellent examples of what can be done and so I'm pretty sure that, like with Frances, Xara would allow you to link from your sig here to your own commercial site. But I am not, as you know, a representative of Xara so that's just an educated guess :) Because your work is so good I expect the enterprise would do well.

Thanks for all the replies so far. Perhaps I can get xara to look at my templates and consider adding them to their site on a shared profit basis (just putting it out there).

Anyway I really want to know if the demand is there, my idea is to have a website offering the templates, It's just hard to see what sort of demand exists, when creating a business plan for a new start one has certain information at one's disposal; exactly how many users are there out there, how many use templates as the basis for the site etc. etc.

I was really hoping to hear from new users of xara webdesigner, experienced users are very active on the forum but it seems new users are either reluctant to post (unless of course they require help) or there really are not that many users of xaras products, I wuold like to think that it is the former.

I just want to say something which should really be clear to the people behind xara. A potential purchaser will look at sites designed with the software or better still templates created with the software by the company who created the software in order to judge the capabilities of the software.

When you look at the templates available on the xara site then I have to say that it is not showing the potential of the software. If I compare the templates available on xara's site with the templates available for say adobe muse then I would, without a second thought think that adobe muse is the better software because the templates are of a far better quality, a harsh fact but a fact nonetheless, simple take a look at http://muse.adobe.com/resources.html to see how adobe openly promote third party websites which offer templates for the software. Or take a look at http://themeforest.net/category/muse-templates and again you will see the variety and quality available, and that software is just out of beta.

It's time that xara or magic woke up and realised that it is not just hobbyists using the software, time to beam into the 21st century.

I think they would be proud to have others trying to help promote the software weather it be fills, templates or whatever. I am sure they do not have the budget to produce such files or they would have them.

Xara sell their own Template packs Richard - e.g. http://www.xara.com/us/products/business-themes/

Champ [I think it is, could be wrong] sells his own too - http://www.xaratemplate.com/buy-xara-web-templates.htm

A couple of others ... point is, whether the market is there

[QUOTE=skech;493861I wuold like to think that it is the former.[/QUOTE]

Yeah me too.