What is Digg?43 Comments
- 4j4x, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17While waiting for that one to come up, here's another:
http://www.oswd.org/ - markus941, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15How about open sourcing some better hosting?
- mrfish, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Yeah but these are anything but cookie cutter. A lot of them are aimed at specific audiences.
- JeremyL, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11I remember way back, these type of free website template sites had crappy designs but now a days, there is some top notch stuff online for free.
- bcwood, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6OSWD is where most of the members of TODC originally came from. We got tired of that site's admin not updating the site, not approving uploaded designs etc. So we created our own open web design community.
- Jdub7, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8As a programmer. I applaud the benevolent efforts of free template sites.
- jus1haz2, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Ok stop with the spam, no one is going to watch your stupid video so you can make money.
- Blandyman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I saw it. It wasn't even that funny :(
Give back the 1/13th of a penny. - raindogmx, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6What a jerk.
- seanrox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5The site hosting was having a slight issue a few hours ago with a bad Vanilla extension (runs the forum), so PHP was disabled on the server. Once the problem extension was fixed/removed, the site is back online and running smooth.
- Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"As a webdeveloper (not a designer, I do the coding part)"... If you're a real developer you probably use a huge number of libraries for your work, and a programming language that's available, an editor, etc. In short, you stand on shoulders of giants, many. Using a template for your site is just that. Nobody is going to stop you from changing the color scheme, or add some additional graphics or do other tweaks. In a way nothing different from a coder relying on external libraries, just tweaking its usage.
- mixplate, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5if you use mephisto as your cms/blog, http://www.railsgrunt.com/mephisto-themes has ported some themes from opendesigns
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Not sure why you are modded down as this is actually a good suggestion to note; mephisto is maturing and turning into a feasible alternative blogging app
- kystorms, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2sites back up now, and believe me this place has awesome designs and graphic artists!
- Tetraca, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6I dislike free templates sites because they promote cookie cutting - using a template design that probably 50 other webmasters saw and downloaded for their website. At least some webmasters with ***** templates at least tried to create something that made their site different from other sites, even though their content may not be unique.
- schestowitz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Installation of themes is made easier, too. From file handling and tweaking it has become a menu-based selector. This changes (lowers) the entry barriers.
- owensbofe, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Great site, great community.
- EXreaction, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6http://opendesigns.org.nyud.net:8080/
Edit, well, it worked good for me the first time. :| - Blandyman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3It's still hard to make money as a web designer, but I doubt this in anyway would hurt a designer.
I mean, honestly... if someone's looking for free templates, I think they'll go for "ugly" before they bother to be original and pay for the great designers out there to help. - SteveyDevey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Although I agree with you in principal, in practice I'd rather see lots of decent cookie-cutter sites with worthwhile content than lots of hideous sites with hard to navigate content. And really, sites like this are about empowering people to create, not telling them that this is all they'll ever need.
- gcopenhaver, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2yeah, it's getting really slow
i downloaded a template to see what it consists of, and the one i happened to download contained an html file, a css file, and a few images. With just a little bit of work they could be used with different CMS's like Drupal. - smellinator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@Syntaxis:
I think you missed the point made by "haplo". Unless you are writing code in zeros and ones, you are doing the same thing. Do you use a high level language? Wow, that's lazy. Call a library routine? Why not write it yourself? In fact, you're probably reading this site in a web browser, instead of coding the HTTP requests yourself! pathetic! (/sarcasm)
It's silly to reinvent the wheel!
I'd agree, if people just take a template and use it as is, it doesn't take a lot of effort. And changing colors doesn't take a lot of effort. But two points:
1. It's silly to create complexity if you don't have to! If you can use a template "out of the box", why not? It's a great way to get a site up and running fast, so you can focus on some other aspects of your business or hobby that might be more rewarding.
2. You can always use the templates as a STARTING POINT and build on them. Nothing is stopping you. Much in the same way that you use a high level language, libraries, a file system, and other pre-written code as a starting point, people can do the same with these designs. People may use them "as is", or as a starting point for inspiration. In fact, these are ideal for "programmer types" like you - who aren't pros at the design aspects. Someone else provides a design, you can put in the backend PHP or ASP or whatever, to generate the content. - MalDON, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5Don't forget this one:
http://www.openwebdesign.org/
Great stuff. - Syntaxis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2As a webdeveloper (not a designer, I do the coding part) I wonder though, building a website is something you oughta be proud of. As a designer you would create your own work and not rip something off, as a technical guy you'd like to code your own thing without premade CMS solutions ruining the fun and as a company I'd never settle for a freely available template online: other companies would be using the exact same thing with a different logo.
Maybe it's just me though. I've seen tons of PHP-nuke sites out there and I can't stop thinking: "Gosh, these guys are lazy.."
No offense intended, I just don't understand ;-) - iffypop, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Most web developers I know (including me) are awful at design - I spend my time working on graceful functionality. We usually hire a contractor for $toomuch to produce often highly unoriginal designs - so the idea of opendesigns is a breath of fresh air to me.
- Brettb, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Before I learned php, I used php-nuke for clan sites and other fun things but I would never use nuke or any other pre-made CMS for a professional enviroment.
- ptFoe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This great for when some ***** relative expects you to design a site for them for practically nothing.
- Uberdork, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Finally, someone is bringing the aesthetic sensibilities of things like Gnome to the Internet.
- Tech3Nine, on 03/05/2009, -0/+0Find some really cool designs. Thanks... Great community.
http://www.annexworld.com/web-design-development.h ...
http://www.squidoo.com/website-design-hosting - brutuscat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I love that one, has a lot of nice designs
- yogastore, on 06/30/2008, -0/+0http://astore.amazon.com/flowtron.mosquito-20
http://astore.amazon.com/flowtron.insect.killer-20
http://astore.amazon.com/evaporative.air.cooler-20
http://astore.amazon.com/air.swamp.cooler-20
http://astore.amazon.com/braun.electric.kettle-20
http://astore.amazon.com/cordless.electric.kettle- ...
http://astore.amazon.com/canon.battery.charger-20
http://astore.amazon.com/12.volt.battery.charger-2 ...
http://astore.amazon.com/furniture.chaise.lounge-2 ...
http://astore.amazon.com/outdoor.chaise.lounge-20 - soxnoslo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I can only get to the front page.....and that took forever. Maybe in a few hours i'll get to check out the rest of the site.
Maybe this will help with some drupal themes - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4I wanted to take a look, but... It's slower than molasses, someone give em some more bandwidth.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1do it yourself.
- Syntaxis, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1>> If you're a real developer you probably use a huge number of libraries for
>> your work, and a programming language that's available, an editor, etc.
>> In short, you stand on shoulders of giants, many.
Wait a second, downloading a template and changing colors takes no skill nor is it creative or unique in any possible way. Programming a custom solution - even while utilizing external libraries - still requires skill (programming) and finesse (programming good software). Using a premade template is.. nothing to be proud of. Catch my drift?
>> Using a template for your site is just that. Nobody is going to stop you
>> from changing the color scheme, or add some additional graphics or do
>> other tweaks. In a way nothing different from a coder relying on external
>> libraries, just tweaking its usage.
Well I program custom made things, I don't download software, alter it and then release it as my own. I program things I can reuse myself, things that fit in nicely with the work structure of the company I work for, software that is maintainable, scalable and generally.. good! :-)
Again: No bad feelings at all, I am just stunned at the number of diggs this article gets. I thought there were a ton of creative folks here that also had their own pages on DeviantArt and all that. Never expected there to be folks who are actually into downloading premade designs :-O - sputza, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Good link!
- teh1337one, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1White background and "Internal Server Error" in bold? Is that the best they could come up with?
- Defi, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0invent [AT] shaw [DOT] ca
- jonreese, on 10/12/2007, -6/+0can't view the designs. none of the links work. is this happening for anyone else?
- dualaudi, on 10/12/2007, -10/+3It's not like it's hard enough to make money in design, let alone giving people more freedom to just grab these free templates... oh bother!
- spaggard, on 10/12/2007, -14/+1http://duggmirror.com
nope...sorry
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