Smashing Magazine - we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. really.

. :-) Stunning collection of templates

great just what we need…more templates that people can submit to design galleries as their “own custom design”

Genius

Great list guys but are you trying to put us web design shops out of business?? haha!

Very helpful! thanks

Wow, thank you very much Smashing Mag!
More posts like that please. :)

Great list, and thrilled to see two of my templates in there (Inverted Healine and Choice).

(How do I get in touch with the author to see if he can change the links to go directly to my website… DemusDesign?)

Seeing how “Reference” is such an obvious ripoff of superawesome it makes me wonder how many other templates in that bunch is nothing else but a cheap clone of some good looking website.

nice collection there !! very smashing magazine indeed !!

This is the downfall of web design. Sure, that may sound a bit exaggerated, but this is exactly the reason why so many websites today look line clones of one another — with all their repeated “Web 2.0 elements” and what not. Developers need to stick to what they do know best, just like how designers should not pose as hardcore developers. Economy is bad enough as it is. Brands across the nation and around the world could actually use some competitive designs that don’t look like every other site with rounded-corners; and the design agencies, whether big or small, could actually use the work. Smashing Magazine, please stop feeding everybody the same kind of bullshit. It’s one thing to inspire people to learn and create, but it’s totally something else to just hand everything to people without them earning it through their own labor. Please, if you guys care one bit about actual creativity in the field of design, if you guys care one bit about the progress of art and design, then you know this isn’t the way to stimulate anything new.

Going to have to disagree with a few posts above. I’m just getting into the field myself, and it is quite helpful to be able to dissect a fully operational template to try to come to terms with all of the quirks in browsers and techniques to resolve different layout issues. (The real solution would be to teach it at the university, or make books much cheaper for students, but apparently no one has thought of that so far…).

(Though I agree with not making 7000+ clones of the same tired website. Even someone interested in the field gets tired of looking at the same thing.)

Exelent =)) !

wow….
It’s nice list :)

gr8 collection !!

thank you very much:)

Good number of collection !
There is a lot of things to learn from these templates ….. ! i recommend the website to my friends

These templates are not supposed to be copied…

Great joke. You’re killing me.

Nice templates u hv there, really professional templates.
Thanks for sharing~~

Thx for the great List! Awesome!

Very cool templates…. molto bene!

Big thx man!

Nice Collections.. Thanks

This is a cool list. For many times I’ve looking for a nice CSS template, here I found various.
Thanks

Let’s not forget that these free templates are designed solely with publicity in mind. The designers of these sites use them as a platform for future bespoke commissions. That’s no bad thing, but it does give a soulless generic feel to some of the freebies. I kind of agree with BR in terms of rounded-corners being passé. They can kill a site if not used subtly. The Greeny Grass template is great by the way – a simple but effective bit of design.

@BR

“Developers need to stick to what they do know best, just like how designers should not pose as hardcore developers.”

That smacks of hard grapes on your part BR,
Clearly you are making alowance for designers who engage in a little non-hardcore development.. aka yourself

Since using templates is considered non-hardcore design you have justified their use by developers.

Perhaps, to paraphrase yourself “Designers need to stick to what they do know best”

siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick
thanks, smashing rocks !

Nice well.

Great!!!

People sure do whine a lot about free stuff…

Now this is just AWESOME!!!

wow, good design is conquering the web! :)

fantastic! thanks!

I see that many of the Freecsstemplates templates are linked through Ez-designs instead of linking freecsstemplates.com directly, is there a reason for that?

Really nice collection, thank you very much.

thanks you so much!

Thanks, it is really useful info! You’re the best! :)

I don’t think it is wrong to exist free templates. I think it is wrong people who charge their clients for a layout wich were not made by them.

One problem is that it is really bad for industry, not for the fact of free stuff, but for the fact people take advantage of it.

Most of clients don’t understand fully our job, but if you question them: ‘do you prefer to pay X or Y?’ (X=layout “done” by someone who used a free template / Y=layout done by an experienced designer / being X much cheaper than Y). Most of your answers will be: ‘i prefer X.’.

People who use ‘FREE’ templates shouldn’t charge anything for it (but that doesn’t happens). They are only difficulting designers life.

Get an insipiration over ‘FREE’ templates, yeah OK. But that doesn’t happen too. They are used often, and often and often.

Even web agencies have their website over a FREE template. But then they say that they design it? (come on…)

I had clients that come to me cause of ‘their’ website been done by people like that (meaning a long range types of people). Conclusion, they all get frustated cause now, they will have to pay more for a ‘good job’.

I coud be giving several examples, but i want to be short.

I am a developer having design knowledge (but most of my work is developing). I don’t think the question is ‘defending’ designers, or developers who don’t know how to design.

Unfortunately, working on this area(web) is very ‘hard’(?) for those who try to keep up a good work. Probably i could say that about 60% who claims to be a webdesigner/webdeveloper should consider a change, cause most of them do ‘bad’ works. (and i have several examples of that).

About this list in smashing, i agree that shouldn’t exist. Honestly.
Considering the slogan: “we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. really.”
Life easier to whom? True designers, i don’t think so. All other people who claims to be a designer and in fact they’re not, yes, they get life easier.

As i said i am a developer, and i don’t understand for all other comments a ‘fight’ over designers X developers. Being a developer, every time a have do design i do it. Insipiration over several stuff, but never using a free template for a client. If it is for my brother who wants a website, yeah, why not using it, keeping the author of the template and so on..

It is all.. Good work to everyone

very nice – thanks a lot

I’m of the mind that if you are a good enough artist you’ll use these templates appropriately. I, for one, like to look at completed works like these and dissect them. Then again though, that’s just the way my brain works. Being fairly new to CSS this is a tremendous help!

There was one template, for example, called “Consultant” that has a few design concepts I couldnt seem to figure out. After downloading it I realized a particular technique of using background images with lists and headers. Of course! Again, Im fairly new to CSS but had I not looked, it might have taken a while to figure it out on my own.

These are excellent teaching tools but if you seriously want to use them “as-is” then shame on you! That just sucks! Thanks Smashing for providing these for “newbs” like me.

Seriously? Did you run out of title characters? I don’t see “bad” in there anywhere.

Editor: 100 Free Bad High-Qualit XHTML/CSS Templates | Putting the “you get what you paid for” in free.

good job. thanks a lot smash!

Very nice list of quality templates. Thanks.

wow these templates are so good. I just love them.

太强大了~~~谢谢提供

Great sites, I love them!

一流的设计，谢谢

muchisimas gracias por las plantillas¡¡¡

Great collection.

nice!

I think that all is awesome but that a little of color in picture part but nothing more .. Note: amazing job!!!! congratulations!!. well see ya!!.

This is coooooooooolllllies 4rm cool guyz.

hey ya !!!

KUDOS !!!

I love all of the templates.
They’re amazing.
Thank you
Mercy
Terimakasih

They all are so beautiful, and free. Ah, i love em all.

I cant believe any where on earth will any one find this stuffs as free..
Tons of wonderful templates an not just few.

Sweden

Wow, I hear a lot of hate coming from designers fearing for their jobs. Get over it. When open source hit the developer world, I heard a lot of ‘oh its all just crap’ and the like out there… mainly from poor excuses for developers. Open source projects didn’t take away from the software world. They helped propel it forward. Instead of building things from scratch, you build on and integrate what’s out there. From a design perspective, these free templates aren’t replacing the job of a good designer: you still need art work, site layout and flow. If your job was just to solely produce CSS and templates like above, then up your skill set.

I mean this is unbelievable Guys….
Check this.

Http://www.opensourcedeal.com

really nice collection. keep on!!!!

thanks.

Thanks for the awsome collection

Nice collection, I found some cool freebies here http://www.dreamlinestudio.com/freetemplates.php

very thanks – it’s very nice templates

A nice collection mate thank you theres a few i havent seen there before. :)

so..guess this is where i become the evil guy…I run a template customisation company. Yer i wont use any of those dew to legal issues etc :)

Now i dont see why so many of you believe templates or people such as my self are evil as templates help get alot of small buisnesses (that wouldnt normaly be able to afford some of the crazy prices some designers charge) online. This in its self is what the web is all about!

The more people and buisnesses that start using the web the better for designers and developers in the end. My company also offers custome designs from scratch and about 60% of my clients that start out with a cheep template site end up paying for a custome job within a year as they have found things worked out online. now as i have around 200 clients a month thats alot of people that are now after custom designs that before would never have even thought of paying out so much money.

Also if you think the only reason 80% of websites on the web look the same is becoase of templates then you really do live in your own little world. ever heard the saying “there is no original thought left in the world” well its true, infact its almost impossible for there to be as our brains hae to get the idea from some where (and yes that is a proven fact) granted over the years there have been a small hand full of people that have come up with somthing new, picasson, d’vinci etc. (dew to use of areas of the brain most of us dont use) so..look at your time line and see how far appart those two fellas where…think there are enough people around at the moment to design all fresh, new designs for web sites?

If you thinks your one then please send me an email pmooreimages@aol.com and i will quite happily find an example that your not.

(btw i only charge $60 for a 10 page site customisation and $120 for an ecommerce site so im not all that evil ;)

very nice collection… thank you very much

Quality Web Design

Beuatiful!!!!
Very great!

it’s very nice templates

Great templates!

good!Beuatiful!!!!

简洁漂亮！