Mobile site - do you have to use a template?

[courtwebdesign]

Hi there,

I am looking at building a mobile site but from what I can find, it seems like everyone builds them with templates? I try to stay away from templates as I like the control of building my own from scratch.
Any reason I shouldn't build my own or better to use a template?

Thanks for your help!

 

[chrishirst]

No reason at all.

 

[drding]

To me it really depends on the amount of time you're willing to spend creating your own mobile design and the amount of knowledge you have.

I'm guessing a lot of times it's just easier for some to use a template because they don't know or don't know enough about coding to do their own and they just want it up and done.

That being said, if you prefer to build from scratch, there's no reason why you can't build something custom for mobile as well. It will look nicer and as you mentioned you'll have more control over it.

Really it just comes down to making sure the mobile design gets used/initiates when viewing the site on a mobile device.

 

[ronaldroe]

Part of the problem is we've reached a point where everyone thinks they need to use a framework, in most cases Twitter Bootstrap, for EVERYTHING. Then, every dang mobile site looks just like the mobile version of Twitter. It isn't that they're using templates, it's just that we've reached a point where we rely way too much on frameworks to "make work easier".

The only way to make work easier and still have it be original is to just practice enough to make yourself faster at it. Sure, a script here, reuse a block of CSS there, but when the first thing you do to start a project is download the latest version of whatever framework you've built your last 8 sites with, you've reached a point where you are no longer a designer or developer, but a site mill.

 

[chrishirst]

but a site mill.

AAAAAAARRRRGGHHHH!!!!!!!, that just brought back unpleasant memories of test driving Adobe's first offering of a WYSIWYG HTML editor (PageMill) back in the late 1990's.

 

[Edge]

I'm a fan of frameworks and leveraging what's out there as they have been through the mill and tested again and again and again. I've never liked the idea of re-inventing the wheel. If you go down the DIY/bespoke route you may end up with lean code but because it hasn't been tested so thoroughly you can get a much longer bug list. For what it's worth, even if a mobile site looks like another version of Twitter, IF it works well and provides a good user experience then for me that's a good starting point as the mobile experience is much more about function than form. Anyway, if the site doesn't look original that's more about being lazy on the design front than about the framework.