Open Source Web Design

As you can probably tell from my article which is displayed in MyWebResource, I am a strong advocate for using templates to streamline the website development. As a designer, I produce free templates to give back to the Internet community, and I really enjoy doing it, but sometimes, the machine idea came to a screeching halt. That's where sites like OSWD prove invaluable.

I find the OSWD by chance one day when I was searching the net for a site template. I am looking for some fresh ideas to help me out of my slump sliding into. You can only do the standard 3 column layout so many times before you really get bored.

When I started browsing the OSWD template directory, I was impressed with the overall layout and design of the site, but a bit disappointed with the lack of features. I quickly got over my disappointment after seeing a few hundred of some of the best web site design ever laid eyes on. I consider myself a pretty good designer, but many of the designs at OSWD really stands out from the crowd.

What impressed me more than anything else on OSWD and hundreds of templates you will find there is that most of the design was, minimal, W3C XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS 2.0 compliant. Many XHTML Strict! In the years I've been on the web and see thousands of template sites, I can tell you from experience, to offer so many high quality, standard templates based on rare, very rare!

I like the site and the OSWD community so much, I even started working on the traditional "static" design again after spending two years doing XOOPS themes almost exclusively.

For the Administrator and the OSWD community, my hat is off to you. You have produced a resource by far one of my favorites, and I strongly feel that every webmaster should have bookmarked your site. If there is no other reason than to keep their finger on the pulse of what's new and hot in the design standard.