Most people, businesses, and causes don’t need a “special” website… they just need a good one.

If you make enough websites, it’s impossible to miss the patterns and similarities from site to site. This might sound harsh, but it's true: When designers over-emphasize complexity or uniqueness, they’re either more naive than they’re willing to admit, or simply inflating the work to feel important.

That’s not to say making a “good website” is easy — there's a reason it takes years of practice to become great at the craft… but it is simple. When you boil down the main ingredients of any successful site, you’re left with many first principles of design, simply remixed and reorganized to suit different goals. If you learn how to do the main things well, you can build just about anything.

This is why I’m all about templates.

A really good template helps you reach the threshold of “required parts” faster, so you can focus more of your energy on fine-tuning the details that stand out in the end. If you’re going to build the same kind of pages over and over, why not save yourself the effort? If not a template, starting from a UI kit or personal system for building will go a long, long way.

Don't try to be special, just good.