How can I be cheap and have a good website?

January 16, 2008 9:05 AM

Anyone know where a pair of clueless artists can find some free website design templates?

My friend and I are trying to get something up FAST, as fast as possible, while keeping as much money free as possible as we have an upcoming art show and we need money for the prints and frames. So yeah.... flash would be awesome, but HTML will suffice. I just don't want some geocities-esk 1990's website! Thanks Mefites!

posted by Bageena to computers & internet (9 comments total)

You could try Open Source Web Design. They offer templates for free download.
posted by stravaig at 9:13 AM on January 16

We need more information as to what sort of site you want to build. Will it house vacation snapshots or a professional gallery of your artwork? Do you want a blog? A store? There are tons and tons and tons of templates out there. Here's a quick list of popular template sites on del.icio.us, but there's no way to narrow that down without knowing what you're after.
posted by desjardins at 9:14 AM on January 16

Open Designs came about when OSWD stopped being updated and has some great templates but do tell us more about what you'd like and we can send more specific resources your way :-)
posted by ceri richard at 9:23 AM on January 16

What are you displaying? Images?

You could buy a domain name for twenty bucks and redirect it to a wordpress blog, or a tumblelog (which may be ideal as it's focused on posting visuals and video).

Also, please, please avoid Flash, if possible. When used for arts/photography websites it is nine times out of ten hideous and unusable.
posted by Happy Dave at 9:33 AM on January 16

Elated has some free full site designs. Some of them are very simple and elegant and you can jazz them up with your own graphics.
posted by iconomy at 9:44 AM on January 16

For Webdesigners: Templates
CSS Easy
Free CSS Templates
CSS Tinderbox
Open Designs
Open Web Design
Open Source Templates
Open Source Web Design
posted by sephira at 11:07 AM on January 16

We want to use the site as a portfolio, essentially. Just someplace to direct people on a business card that'll house information on how to contact us and so on. Thank you guys for the great advice thus far. I don't really need a store or even a blog. Thanks!
posted by Bageena at 11:13 AM on January 16

Some general design tips:
How to Display Your Art on the Web
How Not to Display Your Artwork on the Web
Illustration Career

A quote:
Don’t use FLASH, Frames, Pop-ups, Lightbox, etc .. stick with good old fashion XHTML/CSS! I developed Flash web sites for over 10 years .. and for an illustrator’s web site my advice is DON’T USE FLASH! 40% of my web traffic comes from Google alone and by using Flash you are making it hard for search engines to index your site and hindering word of mouth marketing because of a number of usability issues.
posted by martinrebas at 12:38 PM on January 16

Do it with Weebly, friend.

We whipped up a test site in 20 minutes.
posted by Milkman Dan at 1:16 PM on January 16