For your web site you have to decide if you want a fixed width for the template or want to scale the template to fill the whole browser window no matter what resolution your visitor uses. In this case, you choose a fluid width template that spans about 95 to 98 percent of the screen leaving just a small space on both sides of the screen. If you use that option, check your site for different screen resolutions as it might break the layout of your carefully crafted page.
The following is a sample of a fixed 1024 pixel wide layout and the other of a 98 percent wide screen layout, both read on a screen resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels.
You can see that the second option is not that much fun to read. How could you read that with more text? So choose wisely and think of your targeted visitors. What screen resolution are most of them using? Old computers or new ones, new flat screens with high resolution or old ones that can reach all the way up to 800 x 600 pixels?
The difference between such a 1024 x 768 resolution and a new 1900 x 1200 widescreen can make your site look very "white" and it makes reading the content difficult.
Looking at visibility, you should give your visitors a possibility to change the standard font size of your site. This option is really great if your target audience is somewhat older and they normally would have to use reading glasses. You will gain a lot of credit if they can increase the font size in your pages. There is a quick way to see if a template has that feature built-in. Just look for the larger and small A's in the header of the template.
With some templates you even get a choice to switch between colors, even black and white, just for usability purpose. In some countries, this option needs to be included by law, similar to other usability issues. Check if your web site template is taking the given guidelines into account.
If you think you have all basics covered, go and check your site in a text view browser such as lynx (http://lynx.isc.org/). That way you can see how your content holds up and is seen by a search engine spider.
One thing that is mentioned throughout this chapter is speed. In the next chapter we will be looking at options to speed up the loading time of your pages in general—it starts with the template of your web site.
Loading time matters a lot if you want to optimize your site for search engines. A great looking template might just be what you need for your web site and, if it fits your audience, you want to use it.
It might just be that this template is not fast because of errors in the HTML or CSS files, or because it uses a lot of images that are incorporated into the template. You need to check the files in the image directory of the template and see what elements are used the most. Using an image optimization tool could help reduce the overall loading time if you can reduce the size of the complete template by several KB(Kilobytes).
There is also a template I mentioned before and is fully optimized—BOLT from alledia.com —shown in the following screenshot.
It might not look like a great template at first sight, but it has all the features we talked about in this chapter. And it has the power to change and fit your web site with its different color options and module positions. Buying one doesn't mean you have to mortgage your house, as it costs 25 USD for a personal license.
This is a straightforward template that can be used for a variety of web site topics. It is the opposite of templates that are created by great designers and web sites such as www.joomlabamboo.com, www.gavick.com, www.joomlart.com, www.joomlajunkie.com, and many others. These designers and template builders will give you a wide array of special niche templates. All of them are well built with lots of module positions.
All these features come at a price. It is not only the money you spend on them, but also the larger loading times that they come with. You need to make sure that if you use those templates your site is still loading faster than your competitors'.