template customizations

Whenever we talk to a prospective template customization client we pretty much always get asked some of the same questions such as what do I need to do next, how much for just a basic website or how long does it take?

Thus we decided to create a basic summary of answers to all of the most commonly asked questions. Nevertheless if you have any additional questions please feel free to use the comments form below and we’ll get back to you.

1. How much for just a basic website? - You can get just a basic website off of anyone of our templates for $380 that includes the following… Adding your logo, changing all links (commonly known as buttons), adding a contact form, and up to 5 whole pages of content.

2. What is the process? - Start by choosing a template. Once your selection is made, contact us with some
general information (e.g. some suggested color schemes, colors to avoid, styles or websites that you likes,). Then at your convenience we can contact you to review your projects objective, answer your pre-sales questions, and provides you with a customization quote.

3. What if I didn’t by my template here do you work on other people’s templates? - Yeah, duh! We can customize any template weather it be ours or not. In addition template customization is always delivered on time and we make sure that you have the most standards compliant web sites possible.

4. Can I see some examples of the sites you’ve done? - Absolutely! We encourage you to take a moment of your time to look through some of our template customization samples this will really help you see some neat ideas and creative solutions we bring to the templates we customize.

5. Do I have to pay before or after the work is done? - Since our company is offering non-tangible irrevocable goods a 50% deposit is required on all work orders over $1000. On work orders below $1000 full payment is due upon agreement. We only make exceptions with this rule on a case-by-case basis in agreement of the parties concerned. The price for the order will include the template price along with customization.

6. How do I pay for services? - Currently we are able to accept Mastercard, Visa, American Express, Discover, PayPal Buyer Credit, Instant Transfer and eCheck through PayPal recipients email used to send money is newaccounts@foamers.net. Exceptions may be granted only to domestic customers.

7. Do you only do templates? - What shu talking about willis? The short answer is yes; ready built template customization is our primary focus. Nevertheless we do take on a number of custom design jobs every year as well as offer general site updates and maintenance services.

8. How long does it take to receive the product? - Turn-Around time is determined and submitted for your approval prior agreement of services. Notwithstanding, sense you may opt to make revisions to your original service request at any time this could also postpone the initial estimated Turn-Around time. So, on that note we strongly urge you to give all your information to your designer at once. This will avoid redundant correspondence, confusion, and multiple edits.

9. How do I learn about the status of the customization work? - Once you have placed your order, we are in constant contact with you until the end of the project. Moreover through the use of e-mail, instant messenger software, and FTP programs, to transport data from one location to another, you will be able to check current stage of your order, chat live with a project consultant and even forward personal files required for customization.

10. What if I want to change something? - No! Just kidding, of course you may. You may opt to make revisions to your original service request with up to three rounds of changes at any time during the course of the project. Notwithstanding additional alteration might postpone initial estimated Turn-Around time. On that note we strongly urge you to give all your information to your designer at once. This will avoid redundant correspondence, confusion, and multiple edits.

11. Do you ‘bundle’ your services or offer ‘un-bundled’ services? - Yes we do. Typically minor revision request made after the completion of the original customization request are considered to be new and as such would be itemized and billed individually. Notwithstanding we also offer a number of packages designed to handle customizations on up to 5 pages of content at a really terrific value. For more on that read our templates customizations page.

12. How do I contact foamers.net? - Should you wish to contact us you may do so at anytime just simply hop on over to the contact form and tell us what you think.

If you have any additional questions feel free to use the comments form below and we’ll be happy to provide you with answers and ad them to this Q&A.

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Making your own template customizations is easy we can help you by providing the tools needed in doing this through comprehensive template editing tutorials and articles such as these. Yet we are aware that running your small business is foremost in your mind.

Consequently we can help you focus on that. Our basic template customizations package is very affordable. In addition we will plan and consult with you every step of the way to determine what your website needs. Our template customizations are always delivered on time and we make sure that you have the most standards complient web sites possible. In this article we will teach you a number basic HTML rules that you may very easily apply to change or update the look and feel of anyone of these website templates.

Are you a beginner struggling to learn basic HTML? Or maybe you have a template that you want to make changes too, but you are not sure how to proceed, well this article is just for you. Many people are put off building their own website or changing templates because they think that learning HTML very difficult. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Others also believe that creating your own website means purchasing expensive software. Yes there are many different programs out there that can be used to create a website for you, but basically you can do it all for free if you are willing to spend a little time learning the basics of HTML.

All over the Internet you can find websites offering template that you can download to your computer and add your own content too. Some of these templates are better than others, but even if you do find a high quality template, you still need to know some basic HTML otherwise website will have exactly the same design as everyone else who downloaded that same template.

Like everything else in life learning basic html just requires the right information.

So many times I have been asked by visitors to my HTML for beginners website how do I make my words bold? Or how do I make my text bigger? Using simple tags before and after the text involved will do this.

Here are some more Basic HTML Tags to get you started: -

< *b>Types the text in bold.< */b> This tag will make your words appear bold.

< *i>This should be italicized.< */i> This will give your words an italic look.

< *u>Underline this text.< */u> This text will be underlined

< *hr /> This forms a horizontal line. ___________________

< *font color="######">Change color.Text here< */font> This will change the color of (1) word. This (######) should be placed with the code for the color you want to use. For example if you wanted your words to be red the signs would be replaced with #ff0000

So your code will now look like this and your text will be red < *font color="#ff0000">Change color.Text here< */font>

< *small>This should be in small.< */small> Make your text small

Combining Basic HTML Tags

Perhaps you may want to combine some of the basic HTML codes above. Lets say you want to make your text bold and italic. This is what your code will look like.

< *b>< *i>Text in bold and italic< */i>< */b>

Notice we have put both the bold tag < *b> and the italic tag < *i> together to give us our bold and italic text. These combinations can also be applied to color. If you would like to make your text underlined and green, this is how the tag should appear.

< *u>< *font color="#00ff00">Change color of 1 word.Text here< */font>< */u>

In all of the above code the * should be removed to make your code work correctly. The * is used to allow you to see the actual code but must be removed when placed on your site.

These are just some of the simple things you can do to change the look and feel of your website. To learn more why not check out some of the online basic HTML tutorials to get you started and in no time at all you will be past the basics of HTML and onto pro HTML coding.

About the Author
Basic HTML is not difficult to learn. Visit Web Monster at his brand new blog http://html-code-for-beginners.blogspot.com to learn more about basic HTML coding.

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In a previous post, Top 10 Things Flash Developers Don’t Want You to Hear“, I discussed a number of reasons why I thought it might be wise to reconsider the whole idea of having an all Flash website. One of my biggest concerns had to do with Flash inhibiting Google’s ability to crawl the content. While I have never argued the possibility of making Flash content search engine friendly I do appose the notion that this is some how not even a problem nor that meeting all of these extra hurtles is worth the amount of time and extra money you’ll spend on optimizing Flash sites the right way vs plain old HTML. Notwithstanding in this article we will discuss a number of cases where it is actually practical to utilize this technology.

Article: When Use Flash? The following question is the sorest and the most disputable as for the usage of Flash. So, let us discuss how this technology is applicable for creating Flash sites. At first we have to define the purposes of a site, because they are to determine the choice of technology for creating the site. If your site is intended for selling some product or service, especially, if competition is intense, creating a Flash site is not cost-effective.

This is due to that reason that Flash is not indexed in full by search engines, that is why it will be just impossible or it will cost big money to make these sites occupy the first positions by specific keywords. In such a case an html site is much better suited. Therefore, a Flash Internet shop selling lots of various products is nonsense and rival non-Flash sites with correct search engine optimization will easily overcome regarding the traffic and hence regarding the volume of sales.

Of course, there are Flash Internet shops which function effectively, but most often these are the shops selling specialized products and belonging to large and well-known companies, which do not need heavy advertising. For instance, there is the site adobe.com, which has the like narrow specialization of its products, and those who use their products, as a matter of fact, already know where to buy them.

There is one more type of sites, which offer users a specific product; these are promo-sites (sites designed to present some concrete product or service). There both Flash and html can be used. Again everything depends on the purposes. Let us assume that we want to advertise a new brand of a cellular telephone and we want to do it extremely elegantly. In such a case we need a Flash site, but only on condition that our Flash promo-site will have visitors, but they are evidently not going to come to us from search engines. That is why users are often stimulated to visit a promo-site from producers’ websites or by means of advertising.

This type of sites has a small life-cycle, because they are most often created to demonstrate new features of a definite product. Since new models are continually being created, the old promo websites lose their significance, that is why a website must get its visitors as much as possible interested. This can be achieved most impressively by creating a Flash promo website.

The following type of sites is a forum. The situation with forums is very similar to the situation with internet shops. If a forum does not belong to the company producing a specific product (such forums are very scarce) or it is not created for a very limited number of individuals, but created to attract as many people as possible, there is no need to create a Flash forum. This also concerns blogs.

I am not going to divide websites into groups, I will just do their very brief survey and say from my personal point of view where else it is appropriate to use Flash:

* Chats, because chats are often tied to definite resources and they do not need any additional promotion, and if it is an avatar chat, using Flash is the most suitable choice.
* Galleries, if this gallery belongs to one definite artist, has a small amount of text information and directed at a select circle of users.
* Business card site usually has minimum information content, most often there are the address of the company, contact information (telephone number) and some general information about the activities of the company, that is why original decoration made using Flash will be quite to the point.
* Online portfolio, because this will give an opportunity to make its appearance very bright and make it more dynamic and interesting.
* Guestbooks can also be made with the help of Flash.

I have listed the main things, but there are many more hybrid websites, which combine in themselves various features. The major point to be taken into consideration here is the following: if you want to attract a lot visitors to your resources (especially if your website is developed for selling some products or services) sparing the expenses or completely avoiding them, it is better to make such websites without using Flash or using Flash partially (use html for all text information and Flash for some elements).

Anyway, whatever your website’s purpose is - portfolio, gallery, business website, ecommerce shop, etc. - it is not necessary to order custom web design and hire a flash programmer. There are much simpler and modern solutions nowadays. I am talking about Flash Templates and Flash CMS templates. They are pre-made Flash web pages that require making additional changes to suit your needs and preferences. As a rule, flash web templates are easy-to-use, suitable both for newbies and professionals, and allow launching a website in no time. I recommend a large gallery of Flash web templates at FlashMint.

About the Author
Trenty Fox - Marketing Assistant at FlashMint.com. FlashMint is a leader in an industry which offers Flash Web Templates with high-grade graphics, thought-out structure, remarkable flash and sound effects.

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Intro: Two of our most popular products are osCommerce templates and CRE Loaded templates. Both are actually a combination of osCommerce 2.2 (ready built online store) provided by osCommerce.com and a unique template design from Foamers.net. Likewise we also offer professional osCommerce, CRE Loaded and or ZenCart templates customizations at affordable prices. In this article Tan Thomas offers as tips on how to customize your shopping cart as well as market your product.

Article: When you decide to go with osCommerce for your e-commerce site, you can simply take their stock layout and insert your information and voila! you have a completely functional e-commerce site ready for customers and sales.
If you’re like most e-commerce sites, however, you’ll want to go a step further than that and customize your “storefront” to make it better fit your product. If you are savvy in both the technical and marketing fields, this will probably be a no-brainer. If, however, you are an expert in your product, but not necessarily how to sell your product, this article is for you. It’s filled with tips to help you both design your site and well as market your product.

Design Your Site

1.Change your colors. You can go into your stylesheet.css file (in your catalog root folder) and simply change the colors from the stock layout. It’s amazing what a difference something as simple as a custom color layout can do for your website!

2.Choose a template. If you don’t want to start your website design from scratch, you can use a template that has everything you need for your site except the information.

3.Or, go even simpler. If you don’t want to change the complete template you can opt to change just one thing on the site. This could be the background, buttons or logo. Whatever you choose, just do something to make the site your own!

4. Improve your images. Spend some time learning image editing programs so that you can save your pictures in high quality with the smallest file size so that they both look great and load quickly. With the high speed of the Internet, most people don’t have the patience to wait for slow loading pictures and they may leave your site rather than waiting for the image to load completely.

5.Change the page titles. Make sure that you give each page a descriptive title so that when the page appears in the search engines it gives people enough information to get them to want to click on your link.

6.Put your self in your customer’s shoes. Customers do not like long drawn out checkouts. If you can get the information you need in two to three pages (including the confirmation of information page), your site will have an advantage over those sites that draw it out. The osCommerce forum has information on how to do this.

7. Get a design expert who is experienced with osCommerce. By installing STS Template system or some other equivalent, they can customize your shopping cart to anything. This website lists a series of osCommerce website which had gone through a serious make-over. http://www.efusiontech.com/E-Commerce-Projects.html
Market Your Product:

1.Make your site unique. This is a basic marketing technique and is sometimes referred to as creating a Unique Selling Proposition. Basically, this is a simple statement that tells people what makes your site and your business unique from other businesses, especially those in the same niche. Whether you always offer free shipping or guarantee the lowest prices, your unique selling proposition is what sets you apart from the rest.

2.Don’t forget to sell your product! Getting people to your site and getting them to stay on the site are important, but once they are there you need to SELL the product. You won’t be there to tell them about the items and they aren’t in a bricks and mortar store to examine the product themselves, so your descriptions need to do these jobs for you and the customer. Be detailed, be specific and be honest. Include who would likely enjoy the product and why they would need it. Instead of focusing on the details of the product or service, put some emphasis n the benefits.

3.Make your store more than an online entity. Give your customers a way to contact you. This includes a name, address, email and phone number. If they have no way to get into contact with you, your credibility with the customer declines.

4.Offer more than just the product or service. Don’t be afraid to add articles, tips and information related to your product for customers coming to your site. It will increase your credibility as well as give them reasons to return to your site even if they don’t have an immediate need for your product or service. Related to this is sending out a periodic newsletter that gives useful information, announces specials and sales and highlights specific products.
With just a few customizations your osCommerce store can be a unique site that fits your philosophy, product and needs. You can view samples of some oscommerce website from eFusiontech.com who has done over a hundred osCommerce implementation with customized skin and layout.

About the Author
The author is a designer working in Singapore

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