About These Free Website Templates

Hi there... My name is Rob Darrell and I personally created all the free website templates in the Iron Spider collection (so now you know who to blame). They were a labour of love, I had a real blast doing them and there are definitely more to come. You may download and use them free of charge however certain TERMS OF USE apply.

Here's some more relevant information about them:

Headers and Backgrounds

All headers and backgrounds are rendered using the CSS background property to enable you to easily place text on top using HTML. This is much more versatile than simply using an <img> tag to insert an image.

Some of the photos I used to make the headers and backgrounds are royalty free photos taken from various online sources. Others photos are ones that I took myself or are ones that my cousin Melissa took.

Here are the official...

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks goes for providing the photos I used to create some of the backgrounds and headers in the Two Column Fixed Width series. Be advised that Melissa retains the copyright on all these photos. Her photos were used in templates #: 52, 53, 55, 56

Special thanks goes to Jon Sullivan at PDPHOTO.ORG for providing completely hassle-free (and high quality) public domain photos. His photos helped to create templates #: 25, 26, 27, 32, 34, 35

Special thanks goes to Chris Hutchinson at stock.xchng for permitting me to use his photos. His photos helped to create templates #: 02, 03, 04, 14, 15, 36, 37

Screen resolution

All my free website templates were tested in various screen resolutions including 800 x 600, 1024 x 768 and 1280 x 1024. I think it's generally accepted that 640 x 480 has long since gone the way of the dodo so I no longer produce web pages with this screen size in mind. As of this writing, the most popular screen resolution being used on computers with internet access is 1024 x 768 (according to the W3C display resolution stats).

All the thumbnail previews represent the templates in 1024 x 768 resolution. Liquid display means that the template will expand or contract according to the viewer's screen resolution. Fixed-width display means that the working area of the template is set at a certain width (usually 760 pixels). This will snugly fit into an 800 x 600 screen resolution leaving enough space for the vertical scroll bars without spreading the page and creating those ugly horizontal scroll bars. In 1024 x 768 or larger there will be extra screen space on one or both sides of the fixed-width displays.

Browser compatibility

All these templates were tested exhaustively in the following web browsers:

• Firefox
• Internet Explorer
• Opera

As far as I can tell, Firefox is the fussiest of all the major Gecko-based browsers so this is my canary-in-a-coalmine for that whole group.

Tools I used

I primarily used HTML Kit to create these templates. Hats off to Chami for providing us all with this fantastic freeware HTML editor (check out my tutorial on Setting Up HTML Kit).

I also used:

• Arachnophilia 4
• CopyWriter text editor
• Windows Notepad

As far as graphics and photo editing, Paint Shop Pro was my main work horse but I also used sTile.

How to get and use these free website templates

First (if you haven't already) go to the Free Website Templates introduction page for some more information on what's in the template zip files, where to get them and some basic info on how to get started. Next, after downloading and unpacking the template zip file, if you're drawing a complete blank on how to proceed then check out the Templates Help section. This will tell you everything you need to know.

Give me a shout

Although you are not at all obliged, if you use one of my templates, I'd love to hear about it. Send me an email with a link to your website.


Happy web editing!!