Using a

Polytheist

Member
I suffer from OCD. A psychiatric disorder characterized by obsessive thoughts and compulsive actions. I always find something wrong with the layout style of almost ANY free or non-free HTML template that I usually get from any web store. As a newbie web coder, Editing is all I could do when it comes to web-design which means I cant design a website from scratch.

If you are a web designer, You are probably familiar with sources of "web design inspiration" such as:
https://www.awwwards.com/
or...
https://webdesign-inspiration.com/

They usually exhibit some examples of very stunning websites/Web-Templates that are NOT available through web stores such as Themeforest" or "Colorlib".
My question is, Can i use softwares like Httrack to get the template of any website that already belongs to someone else? I do not meant to steal. I just want to get my desired layout style. Any idea?
 
Sorry about the title of the tread. I no longer can edit that due to time expiration. I hope admins help me what that.
 
It’s not clear from your question if you want a theme for a static site or if you plan to use a CMS.

Either way, a modern theme has to work on all devices (is responsive). This means a layout you like may look great on your pc but just not work at all on a mobile or tablet.

You can use tools to scrape a site to get the layout but it’s likely a lot of the code is hidden away server side which means it’s inaccessible.

I avoid all theme provider sites. They are full of junk.
 
They usually exhibit some examples of very stunning websites/Web-Templates that are NOT available through web stores such as Themeforest" or "Colorlib".
My question is, Can i use softwares like Httrack to get the template of any website that already belongs to someone else? I do not meant to steal. I just want to get my desired layout style. Any idea?

Easiest way is to just look at the mark up and CSS using the inspector window of any modern web browser. Copying the code directly is plagiarism so I woldn't do that, but you can have a look and see how the developer has done wha they've done. Generally modern sites will be using a grid of some kind, if you can identify 'columns' on the page then you can break most sites down into sections.

Let me know what you want the title of the thread to be and I'll fix it.
 
It’s also worth noting that buying a theme and creating content to fit the theme is usually doomed to failure. It’s much better to create the content and site structure then find a suitable theme.
 
Technically you shouldn't use Httrack as you'd likely be infringing copyright.
 
It’s not clear from your question if you want a theme for a static site or if you plan to use a CMS.

I can't convert my HTML template to CMS due to lack of PHP knowledge. Meanwhile, some people consider static website to be much safer than CMS. I'd like to know if that's true.
 
Meanwhile, some people consider static website to be much safer than CMS. I'd like to know if that's true.

A CMS is typically used in conjunction with a database, more than likely MySQL. Since the database stores pretty much all the content and important information for your site (user login detail, email addresses, etc) it's databases that are targeted by hackers and malicious scripts.

A static file CMS I use a lot is Grav, it doesn't use a database so there's no issues with hackers accessing it, all content is stored in text files (markdown) that are interpreted by the CMS and displayed as HTML. It even has some themes available.
 
Meanwhile, some people consider static website to be much safer than CMS. I'd like to know if that's true.
It's not true. Anything can be hacked - even a static html site. But you can lock down a CMS. for example, you can secure the server to prevent brute force attacks and DDOS and you can block by IP. You can also secure the site with all sorts of protection systems. In 10 years and hundreds of thousands of attempts, I've never been hacked. Looking at the stats and just one site has had over 5000 attacks this month.
I can't convert my HTML template to CMS due to lack of PHP knowledge.
Was it expensive? If not you will find using mangaing your site using a CMS much much easier than a static HTML. You may even find the theme developers have a WordPress version (many of them do).
 
Back
Top