Template Monster Blog

Perhaps today you expected that TemplateMonster will launch some promo, or will unveil some new templates that you’re used to. With all due respect to all that, today we’d like you to stop for a minute and think about things that are more than just templates, more than a business and more than the money. You all have heard about the devastating 8,9-mangitude earthquake and a tsunami in Japan, and we’re pretty sure you know things out there in Japan are still pretty messed up even today, several days after the disaster.

At some point we at TemplateMonster began to realize that the community around us is big enough to actually make a difference. And even though the reason that made us think about it is very sad, we are still very much proud to be a part of a community making the world a better and a kinder place for living.

Today we are announcing the start of our donations campaign aimed at helping the victims of the disaster in Japan and the families that lost their homes. There are two parts of this campaign.

1. TemplateMonster will donate $1 from every sale we make during a period starting today and until March 22nd 2011.
2. In addition to that, every TemplateMonster customer will be able to donate another $5 while buying any of our products. On a shopping cart page there is an “Add to order” button that you have to click in order to donate $5. And after that we will charge the template price plus the $5 donation.

On March 22nd we will transfer the amount we’ll have collected by that time to the Japan Earthquake And Tsunami Relief Fund on GlobalGiving.com (GlobalGiving.com is a famous worldwide donations and fundraising medium – that in turn will transfer the funds to the proper organizations in Japan. Of course, we will publish a detailed report about how GlobalGiving.com does all that on our blog, and on our social network pages.

If you feel donating via TemplateMonster is not the most convenient way for you, or if you do want to donate but don’t want to make a template purchase for that, we strongly encourage you to make your donation through alternate ways – for example directly through GlobalGiving.com where you can choose the amount you want to donate. Plus, there are dozens of other projects accepting donations for Japan – whichever way is more convenient for you, luckily making a difference is a matter of several minutes these days.

To make it all as transparent as it can be, we’re adding a counter of the donations you’ve made in the header of all TemplateMonster pages. The amount collected is being displayed there, in real time. On that counter we display the combined amount consisting of the $1 donations from each template purchase and the $5 donations that our customers make.

As you may know, TemplateMonster is a solid company that does not talk at random being fully responsible for all the tasks assigned. That is the way it was with the website redesign of the Hotel ‘Goldener Baer’ in Vienna. Let’s brush it all up!

You may remember originally published post that cited the worst website designs of world hotels that are actually great. That caused a tide of moot points!

After having censured all those indeed unsuccessful design efforts, we decided to actually do something about it to change the course of the events. In fact, we offered our cost free redesign services to any of those websites that stroke the aforementioned list. The lucky one appeared to be ‘Goldener Baer’ hotel website!

So, we took up the deal, and that was enthralling, we should say. The new version of the website lived up to our expectations.

For now, allow us to remind you of what the initial look of the website we’ve redesigned was:

What we have done is that we completely modified the layout, including graphical design of subpages, coding, and the addition of new sections. And even that was not enough. The structure of the website as well required some functional changes. So, we worked on it a little bit having replenished it with extra texts, added an interactive map to show hotel location on Google Maps, user-friendly navigation menu, and much more. We’ve also added functional blocks that were supposed to be the important links to apply.

And what we have eventually received – there’s a world of difference! Have a look:

That is it! Not so long ago this project was successfully completed. So far as we have enlivened the discounts for Hotels category templates, it is appropriate to mention that supersonic redesign of ours!

Little Prince once said: “You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.” Unfortunately people often forget this important truth. There are many abandoned creatures out there. While some can take care of themselves others, such as Havanese dogs, can’t. Luckily there are people who care for our little friends. There is such an organization – Havanese Rescue Inc. It is an independent charity organization that is not affiliated with any breed club but aims at giving home to as many Havanese dogs as possible.

So these guys have applied for a little help from TemplateMonster – they asked for a template that they would like to base their store on (they sell different goods to be able to keep helping their inmates). Well, providing it absolutely free of charge is the least that we could do for the noble work they’re doing. You can see it in the image below.

And this is what these guys have got as a result (available at HavToHavIt.com):

Havanese Rescue Inc is probably not the largest charity organization in the world and maybe they are not saving the whole Universe but they do make lives easier for those who depend on us. And TemplateMonster is proud to be a part of it all.

They say that there can never be too much of something good. Indeed, after having launched the “Changing the Web” global social responsibility campaign we decided that launching another similar project would also be a good idea. That’s when we came across the KillerStartUps.com project. When we saw what KillerStartUps was doing we decided to launch another campaign proudly entitled “Enhancing the Future Web.”

The idea was to cooperate with the KillerStartUps project in the following ways: they choose a “Killer of the Week” winner; Template Monster in turn offers one of the four winners of each month a free redesign opportunity. We then proceed just as we have in “Changing the Web” – providing premium design for the rookies. We can’t wait to see the happy faces of these promising newcomers when they see what we’ll do for their designs.

Recently TemplateMonster set its design team to a practical and creative task. What I’m talking about is TM’s tradition for helping to redesign community-oriented websites for a more attractive and functional web presence.OpenSource.org is a newly redesigned and rebranded resource, but it is actually one of the Internet’s old-timers that has helped many new users and merchants to succeed in eCommerce. And OpenSource.org is still a huge favorite out there!

TM has taken on projects of this kind before, and we have a special affection for www.OpenSource.org . Our experts have also recently redesigned anybrowser.org absolutely free of charge. Both anybrowser.org and opensource.org have done a great deal of good for internet users. We at TemplateMonster know that it was totally fitting to help these great guys to improve their designs. We just decided to assist them in upgrading their layout.

And along these same lines of helping out the people who help others out: we are always ready to help charity organizations and funds – or other altruistic websites – in their missions by offering to redesign their websites. After all we want to be the Internet’s design leader, and to do it responsibly. Are you next?

TemplateMonster Team