What is this Article about?

If you google Customizing Premium HTML Templates, you will literally see thousands of tutorials and lessons on that topic. But why should you “waste” your time reading this article? Well, you won’t be “wasting” your time, that’s why! Some of the tutorials you will see on the internet are either ‘way too elementary’, or ‘way too advanced’. But our goal is to make it as helpful as possible for you as a developer, who we shouldn’t bore with A-B-C-D of web developing; as well as for those, who do not have the basic idea of building a website using HTML Templates.
Here, you will find all those things you need to know about customizing premium HTML template and turning it into a successful website that will eventually help you boost your enterprise or whatever purpose your website is supposed to serve. You will be informed of what are the basic differences between WordPress Themes and HTML templates, what components you should put in your premium HTML template and how to implement them, where to find premium contents or high-quality contents free-of-cost, how to host your website and optimize it for search engines, how you will attract viewers from social networking sites to your website and after launching your website, what DevTools you can use to maintain your website easily!
Not only that, you will be made aware of the common mistakes almost all developers make while customizing premium HTML templates and what you should do to avoid them.
To be honest, we may have spent hundreds of hours coding, but we also spent thousands of hours designing the algorithms, bug-fixing, troubleshooting and then we finally thought, why don’t we share these experiences with everyone and warn them of the ditches they are going to step on and waste their time like we did?

What to choose, HTML Template or an WordPress Theme?

When you are thinking about building your website, the first dilemma that is going to strike you is whether you should use an HTML template or opt for an WordPress Theme? And when you will look up for a solution to this confusion on internet, you may notice that a lot of people are fighting over HTML vs. WordPress- which one is better and that will definitely confuse you even more! Well, as we see the case, both HTML templates and WordPress themes are good. But which option you should go for solely depends on your purpose? Let us give you a simple example to clarify it to you. Will you use a fork when you are having soup or is it a clever decision to take a soup spoon when you are served Beef Steak on your plate? Well, both of them are theoretically possible, but definitely not smart moves in practice. Both HTML templates and WordPress Themes have some specific features that will help you satisfy your specific requirements. As we are talking about customizing premium HTML templates here, we are emphasizing the advantages HTML Templates offer you over WordPress Themes.
HTML templates are a wise choice for you when you are thinking of building a lightweight static website. If you are going to design a website for an enterprise that focus more on the business itself rather than the website, HTML templates are your automatic choice. Below, we have listed a few reasons which will help you understand better Why and When you should go for a premium HTML template:
Lightweight and Fast: The first and most important feature that a premium HTML template based website offers you over a WordPress Theme based one is the ones built with HTML templates are not as heavy as WordPress built ones. This advantage ensures your website to load faster and literally in no time! If your Agency or Services Website takes a lot of time loading its Homepage, it may easily annoy your potential clients and lose you valuable market and revenue which you definitely do not want. The websites built on WordPress themes contain a bulk of components and options in it that may be of no use in your site other than making it heavy and slow. On the contrary, the websites you design by customizing premium HTML templates will be fat-free and will have the exact components you intend to put in it ensuring highest User Experience (UX).
Simplicity: For Dynamic websites, WordPress is your automatic choice where you will be able to easily interact with your viewers. But in case of a Corporate/ Agency/ Portfolio/ Showcase website, that is not necessary. If your sole purpose is just to let your target audience know of your enterprise, services, past experiences and testimonials through a simple yet elegant digital landmark, you should definitely use an HTML website. Without encouraging your visitors to bombard you with FAQ’s but subconsciously persuading them to contact or visit your enterprise offline, it is also possible for you to interact with them if they have further inquiry via a contact form integrated in your website. See, it is a win-win situation for all!
No need of Frequent Upgradation and Maintenance: WordPress Themes are not only dynamic, but they are also very easy to use when you are building a website with it even if you have a very little coding knowledge. But it requires regular upgradation and maintenance which will eat up a huge chunk of your valuable work-hours you could have spent on your actual business! If you do not update your WordPress engine and plugins on a regular basis, it won’t work properly. This disadvantage of WordPress gives HTML a huge favour and ensures the website owners a warranty that their sites will work properly on the long run without putting a lot effort.
Secured: There is a huge amount of readymade plugins available for WordPress Templates. But not only these plugins become obsolete if not upgraded regularly, they also create security issues which is not applicable for HTML.
Low-cost: The HTML templates you will find in the markets cost way less than WordPress Themes. But, “low-cost” doesn’t necessarily mean “cheap”. Not only that, the fact that these doesn’t require regular updates also make you save your money ensuring you a higher Value-for-Money.
Here goes a summary of these long text so that you can comprehend it at a glance:

FEATURES	HTML Templates	WordPress Themes
Lightweight	âœ”	X
Fast	âœ”	X
Static	âœ”	X
Dynamic	X	âœ”
Simplicity	âœ”	X
Customizability	Moderate	Easy
Upgradation Frequency	Less	More
Maintenance	Less Needed	Much Needed
Cost	Low	High

Where can you get High Quality Premium HTML Templates?

Thousands of marketplaces deal with HTML templates who sell both free of cost HTML templates as well as Premium Templates. And obviously, the Premium ones with more features, customizing options and 24/7 support services are always better than the free ones that limit features and options. You will find Premium HTML Templates you are looking for your website in our website – ThemeWagon. We are designing top-class premium HTML5 Bootstrap templates for all kinds of users with very flexible customizing options so that these templates can be used for multiple purposes and cover all of your needs. And if you are looking for free responsive bootstrap HTML5 templates, we have a bunch of those too. Our customers have already built websites for their restaurants, agencies, app landing pages, blogs, services, e-commerce businesses and even an website for a rent-a-chopper service as well! Customizing Premium HTML templates designed by ThemeWagon is very easy with their outstanding documentation guideline. Some of the best HTML templates ThemeWagon has released so far are:

For more templates, you can visit Creative Market or ThemeForest.

A few places where you can learn HTML and CSS

There are thousands of good people in the internet who are more than willing to help you learn HTML and CSS who have already posted well-structured and nicely planned HTML & CSS tutorials. Some of them have written Blogs or even highly detailed Books and some of them created Video Tutorials. If you are willing to learn and understand HTML and CSS thoroughly, we will highly suggest that you start it with the basics and then gradually learn the relatively advanced lessons. For that purpose, learning it from a book is must. Video Tutorials may save you time and teach you quick, but people who want to be MASTERs should not take shortcuts, right? So if you want to learn more about customizing premium HTML templates, you need to know a lot of stuff.
Some such great books are:

And for online tutorials, you may find these websites really helpful:

You may also search for specific HTML Tutorials in YouTube.

Installing & Customizing Premium HTML Templates

There are a few things you should know about before customizing premium HTML templates. The file structure and the coding structure are similar in both free templates or a premium ones. Here goes a list of some basic things you should know and work accordingly one-by-one before you create a website with a premium HTML template.

Dedicated Hosting

This is the most important thing while creating your website which is like a piece of land you are going to build your skyscraper on. You must have your own server or someone else’s so that you can host your website on that server. And heartfelt thanks go again to the good people on internet, who provide us with dedicated servers in very cheap price. You can try ipage, hostgator, digitalocean and others. They offer reliable hosting services at affordable prices.

Downloading & Unzipping a Premium HTML Template

After purchasing the premium HTML template, you will be emailed with a download link. After downloading the zip file, you have to unzip it. Then you will find a folder called “HTML”.

Installing on Server

Copy all the files in the HTML folder and put them on the root of your server. You will find the “index.html” among those files which will be the main page of your website.

Using FTP & Code Editor

It’s better to use FTP clients like Filezilla or FireFTP to change the contents of your template. Install any of them. Filezilla is an independent software and FileZilla is a plugin for firefox browser. To use this, you need to create an FTP account in your hosting server. Regardless of whatever software you are using, both of them will ask you to login with the FTP account credentials. After logging in, you will be able to see the files and you can open them in your code editor.
For editing the contents, you can use HTML code editors such as Sublime Text, Notepad++, ATOM etc. They are very good and handy and used by thousands of web developers all over the world.

Changing Contents with Text Editor

If you log in to the hosting via FTP, you will be able to open the HTML files with code editor. Then you can replace your own texts, images and other contents replacing the existing ones. And if you know slightly HTML and CSS, you will be able to change the code as well.

Some amazing websites who provide High-resolution Images

It may sound damagingly cliche, but we must agree on one thing- “A picture is worth a thousand words”. Though, many will oppose to the saying from an academic or literary point of view, but we, as web developers need not entangle ourselves in those heavy words. When someone clicks on an URL that redirects him to your website, you get a very small window of time to build a long lasting positive first impression on the visitors’ mind. And that little window also dictates that you should not waste those precious seconds trying to impress a visitor with a truck load of words even if your website’s primary goal is to make a visitor read. That is why, you must cautiously choose and use such images which will glue visitors to your website, making them go through your contents without even knowing as well as subconsciously imprinting in them a summarized view of your website which will definitely bring them back again!
Now, you must be wondering why we have wrote “cautiously choose and use” in Bold letters in the last paragraph. Suppose, you are building a website for a feminine fashion and clothing line. Now, will you use images of cute little cats and delicate french culinary in your site to attract people? You definitely will not, though cats and delicious foods are a sure success to catch people’s attraction. Your images have to be relevant and must balance with the contents of your website. Otherwise, a little mistake can cost you a lot of regular visitors. If you get our point already, you may skip the rest of this paragraph. But if you want to go deeper, let us bore you a little with another example. If you are building a website for electric hardware such as drilling machines, nail guns etc., it is safe to assume that an image of a sweaty macho guy with a tool in his hand will do the trick. But what can possibly go wrong in this image? If the image focus more on the model rather than focusing on the tools in his hand, it may subconsciously imprint the watermark of a health supplement products’ website and you will not definitely want that. That is why, choosing images carefully for your website is an important task for you.
To represent your service or product in the best possible way is to have a professional photo session. But the photo session itself may cost more than your entire project which only big firms can afford who are willing to spend at least $15,000-$20,000 for a website. That is where, (AGAIN!) the good people on the internet comes to save the day. There are some pretty awesome websites who will provide you with kick-ass high-resolution images of almost all kinds, either free of cost or at a very cheap rate. Obviously, the Premium images that will cost you a few bucks are going to be better than the free ones, but the free ones are not that bad either! Actually, some of the free images are so good in quality, you may even want to pay for them. These websites offer you millions of high-resolution images and are organized pretty well so that you can easily find suitable images to satisfy your need in no time.
One of the most important part in customizing premium HTML templates is replacing the built in photos of the premium templates. Otherwise you won’t be able to maintain the consistency and the story line of your website.
Some such websites are listed below:
Premium Images:
Shutterstock (A Huge database of premium quality images)
Getty Images (A destination of high quality premium images)
iStock Photos
Free Images:
Pixabay (Highly recommended for free of cost images)
FreeImages

Validating the HTML Code in W3C

World Wide Web Consortium is referred as W3C. This is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. When you write code in HTML, you should validate them in the W3C. If a template or website is not validated with W3C, it will harm the website in the long run.
You may ask why you need to validate a HTML template? Here is why –
You may make some mistakes while coding. It’s nice to check for errors and correct them before deployment.
In the long run, browsers will update them in such way so that the websites having HTML errors may not show properly.
Website with error HTML code will harm your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ranking.
Go to https://validator.w3.org/. You will find an option called “Validate with URL”. Paste your URL and check if there is any error or not. If you want to test the HTML template you are going to purchase, paste the demo link of that website.

Making your website SEO friendly by Customizing Premium HTML templates

From our 6 years of experience in website development, we have gladly noticed many times that our clients have wonderful websites. They have great user interface, clean and modern eye-catching designs, but their websites were not SEO’ed (SEO- Search Engine Optimization). But unfortunately, they didn’t care or knew a little about SEO. This is the most important thing for a website owner to have an SEO friendly website. Otherwise your great website will be lost among millions of other websites. Don’t take that risk. Read the following guideline properly.

Make a list of the most important keywords you want to rank for

When you search something on Google, you see many results in the first page. You see the highlighted text in the title, links and small description in the preview. Please check out the image.
The keyword is “free responsive bootstrap template”. For this specific query, Google provides these website as results. So you need to first make a list of the most important keywords you want to rank for.
You should focus on long tail keyword to cover many important single keywords.

Choosing the right page title and meta description

After the update of the Google’s pagerank algorithm, the on page SEO become the most important factor for SEO. To do the on page SEO, you need to choose the right page title and meta description for each page. Is has to be subjective. You can’t deraile users with different page titles and meta description which has no relation with your page.
Keep you page title within 50-60 words and meta description within 155 words.

Keep the URL/permalinks SEO-Friendly

You need to keep the URL SEO friendly. For example you are a owner of a restaurant called “Spicy”. So when you add about us page in your website it may be – “http://yourdomain.com/about-spicy-restaurant”
Google emphasizes that permalinks should not have more than 3-5 words.
So here is the first few steps for customizing premium HTML templates. More tips are coming in the next week. See you then.