The Internet may be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but UK companies are lagging far behind their trans-Atlantic counterparts when it comes to actually making commercial profit from the newest advertising and marketing medium. Large and even medium-sized companies may well have a Web presence, but the smaller operations are conspicuous by their absence. That's largely due to the cost of either hiring a dedicated Web designer, or out-sourcing the entire operation to a Web bureau.

Web Site Templates 250 offers an inexpensive alternative to any individual or company with a basic grasp of file manipulation. It's a collection of 250 different Web sites, in a variety of different graphical styles. All 250 sites follow a similar theme: they each have a home page and 19 sub-pages, covering subjects such as 'Products and Services', 'What's New' and so on. The user can view any of the 250 different styles through a Web browser (there are thumbnail images to make the selection process easier), before manually copying the appropriate directory onto their hard drive.

Then comes the slightly tricky bit. The user has to edit the HTML files, using any text editor, to add the appropriate sales and marketing text, e-mail contacts and so on. This is made easier by the inclusion of comment lines that explain exactly what you should write, and where to write it. Then all you have to do is publish the site on the Internet using the service provider of your choice. If you want to jazz your site up a bit, the CDROM also contains 10,000 clip-art images, and each of the 250 Web site templates has both a 'plain' version, and an alternate version that includes a Javascript navigation bar.

Verdict
This is not a perfect solution, because the line between personal home page and small business Web site is somewhat blurred, but with relatively little time, effort and knowledge, Web Site Templates 250 allows any company to have a presence on the Web. In this 'information age', that's something that no business, great or small, can afford to be without.

Company: Xoom Internet

Contact: 01483 417633

Tags: html world wide web sliced bread javascript text editor website web design web design and development