New stars in the sky
27 new design templates
Great news for everyone that likes to use ready-made templates and then customize these. We have just released 27 new templates which are now available online for all versions. Our new templates are named after planetary systems and stars. This basically means that with this release there are new stars in the design-skies.
Taking into account the existing 7 templates which we offered right from the start, we now have a total of 34 modern design-templates available. The 33 additional classic templates are also still useable, giving you a total of 67 prepared and selectable design templates.
Though several hundred old templates are also still useable, we strongly recommend to use the new templates as only these offer the full functionality of features within page4. We will soon release a blog in which we explain how to switch to the new templates easily.
The old templates will of course remain online and useable as many users still prefer these and are reluctant to make the switch. Perhaps these new templates can persuade more users to switch to these templates.
A brief comparison to other webkits
Reviewers of webkits like to see how many templates are being offered. To date, most reviewers have ignored page4 even though it is used by many customers. I believe it is justified to compare page4 to the competition ourselves and see if we can keep up.
One has to keep min mind that each system is different and most competitors only offer an individual design, if you are able to change the program code. Jim offers an interface that lets you integrate your own, self-programmed design templates under certain conditions and rules. Weebly allows the user to upload the complete source code including images. Other systems allow the user to change the code manually. We have purposely not integrated these functions. Instead, we have completely revised our design editor and are now able to offer the only system worldwide that allows to edit all these parameters by means of integrated dialogs and option fields. This basically allows the user to design websites without any programming knowledge. The templates we provide are merely startup aids and were designed with the help of the included functions to which every user has access.
Compared to other webkits, page4 really offers millions of individual design templates, while Jimdo. Weekly, 1&1 and others can only edit a small number of parameters such (eg colors, etc). Page4 does it differently.
Structure - the framework of your design
There are currently 4 structured (HTML) frameworks which dictate which elements may be implemented into the website (Header, sidebar, footer, content and navigation). These are basically custom templates, which the user may modify at will. All available design-templates utilize these four structures. Naturally, we also offer tools to save ready made templates but apart from that we use exactly the same tools that are available to our users. We will keep on expanding these structures and probably develop templates that are still impossible as of today; we will release these new structures as soon as we have completed them.
Once a template is loaded, you can use the editor to completely customize it. The templates are really just a basic idea upon which you can build and design whatever you want. As always you have the option of customizing every template with the design editor and thus create you own personal and unique designs.
Along with the 34 new templates, we currently offer a total of 67 templates online from which you may choose to create your own personal website. Considering that any of our templates can be customized in many different ways, it is fair to say that we have way more than our competition. It may seem hard to believe, yet it is true. Indeed, some competitors have templates that we still could not “replicate”, but we are continuing to expand our system.
Lets us examine the parameters a bit closer and then calculate the total number of variations that can be generated from this.
Change the overall width of the design
You can set the overall width between 700-1500 px in increments of 10 px . Let us calculate 5 different widths for each template, i.e. 700 px, 850 px, 940 px, 1050 px and 1200 px. This already gives you 335 design variations; you might be wondering if such a comparison is at all possible. A competitor from Hamburg, Jimdo, claims to offer hundreds of templates while really only offering 38 templates. How can they do this? Because there are have a number of variations of each template; eg different width, height or simply different colors - settings, that the user cannot adjust himself. Only a few of our competitors offer the option of adjusting the width manually, therefore many companies offer a large number of templates which really are not that different at all.
To be fair, we only acknowledge variations that are clearly different. One could now say that by altering the width of this template, we can generate up to 80 variations of this and say these are 80 different templates (Because the 800 px " leeway " 700-1500 px can be adapted in 10 px steps in which 81 different widths are possible). By this method, you would not have 67 templates but a total 5,360 variations! Nevertheless, we do want to mention that all you have to do in page4 is move a slider. Naturally, we offer to additionally adjust the width of the sidebars and also keep the spaces between the elements adjustable by the user’ this, of course, would bring even more variations if calculated that way.
Let us remember: Our 67 templates with 5 different overall widths already give us a total of 335 different design templates.
Adjusting header height
Naturally, page4 allows you to change the height of the headers. Let us consider merely one header as that is all most of the competitors offer. You can set the height between 50px and 500px in increments of 5px. If we now take just 4 variations 100px, 200px 300px and 400px we can already generate 1340 different design templates which are sure to look very different from one another. Once again, let to be known that other systems simply offer fixed variations with different header heights which cannot be adjusted further.
Page4 reaches 1340 design templates simply by adjusting overall width and header height; no other system offers that many options.
Naturally, you can do many more adjustments. We would like to present one more option that non of our competitors have: while all other systems more or less allow to change the colors of the fonts and/or the navigation, this navigation is always fixed and does not allow changes. Page4 does not limit you to these factors.
Adjusting the navigation
You can replace the navigation of any template and you may re-locate the navigation. At this time, we have 8 vertical and 11 horizontal templates. More are coming soon.
Let us assume that we want to change each one of the 1340 variations by generating 3 variations by means of the navigation-template. By doing this, the appearance of the design can change dramatically. Alone the switch from horizontal to vertical navigation generates a completely new design; but also exchanging a horizontal navigation by a different template will strongly affect the appearance. This gives us a total of 4020 design variations which all look different.
Additionally, we can generate an additional 2 versions of each design by simply relocating the navigation. For example, you can place the navigation square at the very top, above the header, in the header or below the header. Each time, a new design with a new look is generated. This means that with only 2 variations we can now generate 8040 design templates in seconds.
Let us stop here - we did not even consider the fact that any template may also be adjusted in terms of header, footer, sidebar hide or show, mirror overall design, set the length of the sidebars, set its exact parameters, round corners, shadows, etc etc. If we would take all of these variations into our calculation, the final number of templates would be very high.
Let us compare that to the competition. Wix currently offers 290 templates; Weebly offers 60, Jimdo offers 38 templates and 134 variations of this, giving a total of 172 templates. 1&1 has a total of 513 templates. All of these competitor hence offer a total of 1035 design templates for its users. If we now look back at the options we have in page4, we easily reach a total of 8040 templates - and this is a very conservative number.
You can also reproduce many templates offered by our competitors with page4. At this time, we cannot do everything since an individual programming of templates can be hard to reproduce using just building blocks. We will continue to produce additional structures that will allow us to implement even the most unusual ideas. The good thing is that design templates that were reconstructed with page4 may look exactly like the original ones, but they have all options of the regular page4 tools for customization and personalization.
It is already clear that page4 users will find that no other system offers this many design possibilities!
Anyone that has followed us one the last 2 years will know that we regularly release new updates and implement new features. We work closely with our users and are happy to hear about even the most outlandish idea that may help us to make page4 even better. We are already implementing many of our user’s ideas and cannot wait to present them online when we are ready.
We welcome all comments, praise, criticism and your general suggestions. Anything that makes sense and is technically possible will be implemented!
Until then, enjoy page4!
- your page4 developer team -
PS - It would be great if you would share this article with your friends so that everyone hears about how easy it is to generate great websites with page4. Thank you so much!
PPS - An overview of all design templates can be found at http://en.page4.com/design/