Website templates as starting points

I’ve been lately thinking and working on the idea to create website templates — but not really templates — for people who want a site, but don’t know where to start and don’t want to start from zero, but also aren’t ready to invest in a custom site by a web designer.

We tend to think of templates as generic and boring, and that’s quite the opposite of what I want the internet and websites to be. I believe websites should have personality and uniqueness and be nice to look at.

So that’s what I want to do.

My aim isn’t to design them as final websites but as starting points. Like a base to start from, rather than a template to fit into. This also goes with my idea of having a lived-in website and prioritizing starting instead of perfecting indefinitely.

And for a template to be a starting point, people will need a way to transform it into something that’s more unique and speaks to them. So it can’t just be a template; it needs to be like a kit, the pieces to create the actual published website. And that’s where the resources library comes in. A bunch of resources to customize the template, but not just the technical aspects, also creative ones: How to turn a template into your published website.

Another aspect of this is that in order for the final websites to stay unique, there needs to be a limit to how many people can start with the same template. Because the more people that get that same template, the fewer chances to actually end up with something actually unique. So each template can only be available to a handful of people, and I’d create more and more different starting point templates.

For now, I’ve created the first template, Typing Blueberry, made for writers — but really for anyone, because it’s just a starting point, it’s just layouts — and I’m building the resources library for those that get this or a future template.