Pros and cons of free blog website templates

There are many sites out there offering a wide variety of free blog templates. Blog templates are essentially pre-made designs for your blog coming in a wide range of colors, formats, text options, graphics, frames, and more. They are usually used by people who want a great looking blog but may not know how to code in HTML.

Free blog templates offer up the designs for preview, then allow anyone to copy the HTML code and paste it into their blog when editing their blog. Then when ever anyone views the blog, the template selected is displayed on the person's blog.

But are free blog templates good and worth the time? There are pros and cons to free blog templates and they'll help you decide if you should use a template for your blog design.

Pros

Free - These free blog templates are free. Some may cost money, but if they are truly free then this may be their greatest asset. You just can't beat free.
Easy to setup - The templates usually only require the blogger to copy the HTML code for the associated template they want, then just paste it where directed to on their blog editing page. It is easy and quick to use and change templates.

Look good - What looks good is in the eye of the beholder, but if you have a blog and want it to look good, you might use a free blog template to get the look you want. Of course you run the risk of picking a template that other bloggers already use, so it is unlikely your blog will look completely unique.

Cons

Limited customizing - Unless you know HTML code, you may not be able to customize the blog template you choose. You may get the option to change the colors or fonts in some parts of the template, but without HTML knowledge, there isn't much you can do to make your template yours. They tend to be used by many people at once.

Ads - Some blog templates that are free may come with built in ads. Usually these ads are small images or text links within the template advertising where you got the blog template from. So you paid nothing for the template, whats a little advertisement supporting the site it came from? These little ads just show that you simply copied and pasted code of a pre-made template to put on your personal blog.

Along the same line as ads, some blog templates that are free might contain spyware or malicious codes embedded in the code. Your template might look good, but the template might be just a carrier for malicious programs. Also these blog templates can be compromised by hackers and the template code could be altered.

But in the end free blog templates for what they are worth can give your blog a nice look and nice touch if you do not know HTML or know how to create your own templates.

Your best option is to look for sites that allow you to build your own template and allow you to do so without HTML or coding knowledge. Of course if you know how to code templates, you don't need free, already made blog templates to make your blog the best looking one around.