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At the agency I work for, we recently put all ~1,100 of our sites behind a CDN. It seems to be working. Unfortunately, I have no idea why or how we did this. Therefore, in the first part of this article, I force our CTO, Joshua Lynch, to explain the process to me. This has the unintended consequence of Josh suggesting I try this on my own website, a process I’ll narrate for the second half of the article.
I learned three surprising things:
In our case, the biggest benefit to being behind a CDN is actually not performance or security, but rather the “DNS abstraction layer”, a concept I’ll explain below.
Moving to a CDN was a difficult process for us, but only because we have a high domain-to-staff ratio. For a single site, it would be a breeze.
There are no worries about media files 404’ing; no urls need to change. In other words, the common concern about missing post-content images and such is not an issue for us.
Surprised? I was. Without further ado, Josh explains it all.
The Interview
What was the “point A to point B”? In other words, what were we doing, and what are we doing now?
Point A was private hosting with a technology company and no CDN. Point B is hosting with WP Engine, behind CloudFlare’s CDN.
Was the problem with point A our hosting, or the lack of a CDN?
Both, sort of. Our top cause of downtime was malicious traffic that our hosting environment was not positioned to handle. Also, our server response times consistently hovered at around two seconds. Response times should be under half a second, and two seconds should be nearing a complete page load!
This, combined with other business factors, forced us to switch hosts, but the lack of a CDN made this process far more difficult than it would be now that we’re on one. If we ever need to migrate again, it will be much easier.
Wait, why? What does a CDN have to do with migrating hosts?
Migrating to new servers requires DNS changes. Because of our high domain-to-staff ratio, this makes for a lot of manual work. It’s made even more difficult in situations where our clients manage their own DNS settings.
By getting all our site onto a CDN’s name servers, we gained an abstraction layer between our domains and our hosting — a very good abstraction layer. Unlike GoDaddy, where most of our domains are registered, CloudFlare has an API for managing DNS as well as an easy interface to use browser automation. If we ever need to switch hosts again, it will be very easy to change our DNS settings through CloudFlare. It will be completely automated, and completely transparent to our clients, even the ones who manage their own domains.
I always thought the point of using a CDN was to serve files faster.
For some websites that are more media-heavy, that’s true, but not for us. Most of our content is pretty light on media files. For us, the real value in having a CDN is the DNS abstraction layer.
That’s not to say there is no performance benefit for us. We’re far less susceptible to DDOS attacks, because far fewer requests even make it to our host! That’s a combination of CloudFlare’s caching, and their reputation-based DDoS protection.
Why CloudFlare over other CDN’s?
There are many CDNs, but there are few products that compete with CloudFlare directly and none that I’m aware of are as affordable. Since we weren’t looking for just a CDN, but the benefits above as well, CloudFlare was the obvious choice.
Personally my own WordPress multisite has been running with CloudFlare in front for years, so I had the experience to be confident in using them at work. They also have an excellent reputation among the technology companies that we work with.
So, did it work? Any data to help illustrate?
When CloudFlare redesigned their app earlier this year, we lost the ability to see combined analytics from our domains, but you can view the analytics for individual sites in a CloudFlare account at `https://www.cloudflare.com/a/analytics/example.com`. The results are most pronounced on our busiest sites.
Stats for one of our busiest domains, demonstrating that only a fraction of requests even make it to our host. Most are served via CloudFlare’s cache.
How did we get this done exactly? We had to go into our Godaddy account and change the DNS settings on all our domains to point to CloudFlare, with no API access, and probably a 300:1 domain-to-staff ratio? That sounds terrible. How did I miss this?
You’re right, it was a pretty big project we started in October 2014 as we prepared to migrate hosting. Fortunately with some browser automation and manual labor, changing all of the nameservers to CloudFlare for the domains we controlled was the easy part.
What did we do with browser automation, and what did we do with manual labor?
Fake, an easy to use browser automation tool, added domains to CloudFlare and collected the nameserver assignments (if I remember correctly you can’t programmatically add new domains to CloudFlare). For our domains in GoDaddy, our labor crew changed the nameservers to the ones assigned by CloudFlare from when Fake added and recorded the domain names.
And you’re saying that was the easy part?
Yes! In cases where clients control their nameservers, it was the usual challenge of coordinating any DNS record change, but with the upside that future DNS record changes could then be managed by us.
What is the challenge associated with that, exactly?
People have a hard time understanding the domain name system and records. And domain registrars complicate things with difficult user interfaces and using different (but accurate) terms for the same things. If you are busy like our clients and don’t understand something, you’ll have a hard time prioritizing and completing it.
A big challenge was that after you add a domain to CloudFlare, you have 14 days to change your nameservers, otherwise you have to re-add the domain to your CloudFlare account (and you may not get the same nameserver assignment again). Which brings me to the next challenge: CloudFlare tries to give domains within an account the same nameservers, but it’s not guaranteed. So we had to carefully craft our email campaigns to list the correct domain(s) a client needed to update as well as the matching nameservers they should switch to as well as emphasize the importance of changing within the 14 day window! I believe it took three rounds of nameserver assignments, each with two or three email campaigns to remind clients to change, in order to get the majority switched.
Who were you emailing, and how? Do we have a list to the tech/marketing rep for each client or something? Or is this a CRM thing or what?
We exported contacts from our CRM and also from Whois lookups!
Man. How long did all this take?
My memory is already sadly fuzzy and we were not time tracking back then, so I could only estimate the man hours as dozens, possibly over 100. We did get almost all of the client-controlled domains switched in addition to all the domains we already managed through GoDaddy.
So, once we had all of our domains pointing to CloudFlare, what happened next? CloudFlare was still pointing to our old host, correct?
Correct, so we pointed all of our domains in CloudFlare to WP Engine. We were able to programmatically change the A record IP addresses in minutes when we needed to with CloudFlare’s API.
So, wait, what? We did a large API call to CloudFlare to change A record IP addresses? When? How? Who wrote the API client? Or was this a task somehow handled by the Fake engine?
We made thousands of requests to the API with some basic desktop scripts I made over Christmas break that year. This enabled us to make thousands of record deletions, edits and additions in minutes rather than hours of manual changes or Fake automation.
I’m still surprised that, for us, a CDN was more about DNS abstraction than performance. It makes sense, but by that same logic, aren’t we now tightly coupled with CloudFlare? It would be another giant undertaking to migrate away from them if we need to.
That’s true, but it seems far less likely for the presence of a CDN to be a problem, compared to the myriad things that can go wrong with hosting. Also, CloudFlare is a very stable partner. By this time next year, they’ll probably have an IPO.
Whenever I hear about CDN migrations, I always hear about headaches with media file urls needing to change, or images in the post content 404’ing. We didn’t have that problem, and I notice that our images don’t point to CloudFlare. What’s going on?
With CloudFlare, You don’t have to serve media files from other domains like you do with traditional CDNs because you change your domain’s nameservers to CloudFlare’s. Then CloudFlare uses Anycast to point your domain to their nearest data center to serve the files they’ve automatically cached. In their own words:
CloudFlare operates out of 76 data centers around the world. Our CDN automatically caches your static files at our edge nodes so these files are stored closer to your visitors while delivering your dynamic content directly from your web server. CloudFlare then uses a technology called Anycast to route your visitors to the nearest data center. The result is that your website, on average, loads twice as fast for your visitors regardless of where they are located. https://www.cloudflare.com/features-cdn/
To what degree was this move difficult, simply due to our insanely low staff to client/domain ratio, compared to most agencies? Is it fair to say that this would have been really freaking easy if, say, for example, we literally just managed one high-traffic website?
Correct, the majority of the complexity was due to the logistics of managing hundreds of domains and helping hundreds of clients update the nameservers on domains they registered. Switching to CloudFlare is very easy with a single domain, though you do need to be careful with settings to prevent issues.
I’m going to attempt to re-state the process in my own words.
We have lots of websites. For some of them, we control their DNS settings via GoDaddy. For others, the client retains control, via their domain name registrar of choice.
We used Fake, humans, and API calls to manage the domain pointing and setting. For domains out of our control, we had to wrangle our clients via several rounds of email, sent to a list gathered via CRM and Whois.
No worries about media file urls or anything because of the simple fact that with CloudFlare, you change your nameservers to point to them.
The difficulty for a single site would be trivial. Any appreciable hardship on this move came as a result of our high domain:staff ratio.
Is that accurate? Anything to add or take away?
Correct! You should switch your domains over to CloudFlare too to check out the process.
Let’s See if I can Figure This Out Myself.
Challenge accepted. I generally understand the process that Josh explained, and I’m going to try it on my own WordPress multisite, which has two domain names, scottfennell.org and scottfennell.com.
I open an account with CloudFlare and also log into my BlueHost account, which is my domain registrar. Well, this is pretty easy. CloudFlare prompts me to enter my domain names, and then treats to a video explaining, more or less, what Josh explained above.
screenshot from CloudFlare intro video.
They claim in the video, which is about a minute long, that the video takes longer than the migration process. They were right. All I had to do was note the nameservers that CloudFlare assigned me, and update them in BlueHost. I’m done. I’m on CloudFlare now (or, I will be once the changes propagate).
I suppose the more interesting topic, is so what? Is my site any faster? Unlike most of our sites at work, my site has tons of large images. It’s basically a high-res photo gallery. Pre CloudFlare, this page took about 3.1 seconds to load, uncached: http://scottfennell.com/turkey/suphan-dagi/. With CloudFlare active, it’s taking about 2.2. Pages with more media are even more accelerated, and where I’ve enabled page-caching, I’m getting to DOM ready in about 300ms. If you’re curious to inspect the network panel yourself:
Has page-caching: http://scottfennell.com/turkey/
Does not have page-caching: http://scottfennell.com/japan/
Check out these analytics, after just a few days behind CloudFlare:
CloudFlare analytics, demonstrating massive proportion of cached requests.
One interesting side-efftect: Some of the image galleries on my website display the images in random order. Behind CloudFlare’s page-caching, I’m getting the same order on each page load, since it caches the output the first time a given url loads. Similarly, at work, it would create a lot of confusion with our clients if they expected to see our updated work but instead were stuck with the version that CloudFlare had cached.
I’m actually delighted by this problem, because it’s provided me with some job security: I got to write a plugin!
A WordPress Plugin to dump your CloudFlare Cache.
Here’s what it looks like:
Screenshot of our CloudFlare plugin.
You get two buttons. One to dump your cache, and another to enter dev mode, where caching is temporarily suspended for up to three hours. If you’re interested in using CloudFlare at an enterprise level on more than just a couple of sites, I’d highly recommend taking a look at their API and building a similar tool for your platform of choice. Sunny looks to be a very robust option for dot org, though I haven’t used it personally.
If you do roll your own, note the admirable job that CloudFlare does with integrating API docs into their web UI. Check this out, it’s sitting there begging for you to make a call:
Screenshot demonstraing API docs nicley woven into wep app UI.
Alternatives and Next Steps
I’ve gone from being vaguely aware and happy that we moved to CloudFlare, to being pretty damn stoked about CloudFlare. My apologies: I really had no intention of making this a CloudFlare love-fest, so allow me to point out that there are probably some alternatives, in particular one from Sucuri.
Aside from the business case for CDN’s, there’s also an opportunity for skill development. If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time off on an island in your text-editor, and it’s easy to become divorced from the process of actually serving that code in production. Spending some time learning my DNS vocab words has been a refreshing chance of pace. If that sounds like you, and you don’t have your sites behind a CDN, take a break from code for a while, and audit CloudFlare.
Scott Fennell is a WordPress theme and plugin developer in Anchorage, Alaska.
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Ad blocking has become so prevalent on the Internet that a study from last year estimates that publishers will lose as much as $22 billion from this software. Their fears have only been worsened by Opera’s powerful move, announced just last week, to allow its users to block ads natively, from right within the browser. At the same time, worried companies, such as the New York Times, have begun to dabble with thwarting users who rely on ad blockers.
The current situation is a bigger-than-ever conflict between ad blockers and ad publishers and websites, with the former advocating for a superior user experience, and the latter trying to protect their all-important bottom line. Only time will tell if publishers will just have to get used to all that lost revenue from ads not getting to users or if websites can somehow find a way to still continue running ads without bogging down the user experience significantly.
In the meantime, moves from both sides indicate a series of escalating volleys that show no signs of abating anytime soon.
A revolutionary way to block ads
In a first for browsers of any kind, Opera last week announced in a blog post that it had incorporated an ad-blocking feature right in its browser, at the “web-engine” level. The company asserts that its native, ad-blocking technology is superior to the usual ad blockers that users would simply install on their browsers with a plugin.
One motivation for Opera’s radical shift in ad blocking was data that shows that more and more users are already employing ad blockers in their browsers. From 2014 to 2015 alone, those using ad blockers on computers jumped by a staggering 41% across the globe. Opera is interpreting this stat as widespread approval and demand for more ad blocking, which led to the company’s revolutionary, native approach to blocking ads.
In an experiment Opera performed, it concluded that its native ad-blocking feature produces browsing speeds that are up to 45% faster than even Chrome’s AdBlock Plus extension. It similarly beats all of the other major browsers’ ad blocking extensions when it comes to speed.
Allegedly, it beats:
Mozilla Firefox by 21%
Internet Explorer by 89%
While the company is confident in its own research, a test performed by TechCrunch comparing Opera’s browsing speed from its native ad blocker to the rest found less dramatic results.
What makes Opera’s venture into native, in-browser ad blocking so surprising is the fact that it actually owns an online advertising firm. Nonetheless, the company maintains that it’s a purist when it comes to the user experience, so its efforts are aimed at helping the users, first and foremost.
According to Opera’s SVP of Engineering and Head of Opera for Computers, Krystian Kolondra, it recognizes that ads fuel the web and ensure that many services are free for the users. Even so, its own research strongly concludes that ads are the culprits behind many websites’ slow loading times and, therefore, poor user experiences. This is unacceptable to the company as an advocate for improving the Internet for everyone.
This is a definite boon for users worldwide, but it isn’t sitting well with some companies.
Retaliating against ad-blocking users
One of the more noteworthy companies that’s taking a stand against this ad-blocking explosion is the New York Times. While it certainly isn’t the first—others that have waged war against ad blockers include Wired, Forbes, The Washington Post, and Hulu—it’s prominent because it’s one of the oldest papers in the U.S.A.
Last week, the Times started to experiment in small baby steps with different methods of retaliating against ad blockers. Targeted at a “relatively small population of subscribers and nonsubscribers”, the company is forcing some users to either whitelist its site, or pay for a subscription. In a tactic that some may call putting pressure on ad blockers, the paper is planning to protect its bottom line.
The paper is being straight to the point about why it’s blocking ad blockers. The few, select users—the criteria for selecting these users remains undisclosed—who are unlucky enough to be targeted by its anti-ad blocking efforts have seen this popup message:
The best things in life aren’t free. You currently have an ad blocker installed. Advertising helps fund our journalism. To continue to enjoy The Times, please support us in one of the following ways.
This copy then leads to two call to action buttons: either “Subscribe” or “Whitelist Us”.
Understanding the reality that its attempt to pressure users to fork over money or get rid of their ad blockers may backfire, the Times has other options ready for testing if people decline this pressure tactic in droves.
As a way of justifying what some would call heavy-handed tactics, a spokeswoman for the paper claimed that the intent of this popup message is simply to inform users of the financial damage that ad blockers cause. Digital content creation is quite pricey, so ad blockers actually hinder operations like the Times from raising adequate money through their sites to keep funding news-gathering operations. The spokeswoman also mentioned how, in the long run, only the consumers would be hurt… presumably from not having access to publications like the Times anymore without paying.
It remains to be seen, however, whether the consumers the Times claims it’s trying to serve would agree with the company’s belief that paying for content and reporting they could get for free elsewhere is really in their best interest. After all, these consumers are the same users who have to put up with slower page load times and a poorer user experience if they don’t use ad blockers. That’s the entire reason for these stepped-up ad-blocking wars in the first place.
What each side is betting on
So this is where we stand on the web as 2016 gets underway. With users getting increasingly fed up with sub-par user experiences that studies partially blame on ads, it’s no surprise to see the proliferation of ad-blocking features, whether as extensions or as native features in browsers like Opera. One might ask what took users so long to finally make this statement.
From the viewpoint of publishers and websites, it’s all about losing money: money they require to keep their doors open, keep their staff employed, and hook new users and readers.
Ad blockers believe that they’re acting in the good of users worldwide, and that sites are powerless to stop them. On the other hand, sites like the Times believe they can slowly but surely pressure users into either paying money to read their content or putting up with their ads just the same.
Unless all major news sites on the web agree to do this, it doesn’t seem likely that the Times can succeed.
Creating a website from scratch is a challenging task. You have to combine the skills of a designer and a developer to build something worthy; something that will meet trends as well as comply with requirements. The workflow is time-consuming and requires remarkable effort. However, in some cases, this can turn out to be an unjustified expenditure of resources. Sometimes, all you need is a working HTML/CSS template with a beautiful design, a robust yet flexible foundation, intuitive customization options, easily extendable functionality and proper commentation; or in other words: a pre-made base that you can quickly adapt to your needs or transform into a CMS theme.
There are plenty of high-quality solutions for every taste. Along with premium products, there are numerous freemium templates that, as practice shows, do not yield to quality and potential. To see for yourself, we have gathered the best HTML/CSS templates from 2015 including personal portfolios, blog layouts, corporate themes, e-commerce interfaces and others.
As UX professionals, we play a key role in raising the bar for customer experiences. A simple attention to detail is often what signals to the customer that we’re thinking about them. In the digital space, we focus on user interactions within applications devices and processes.
With the ever-increasing computing power of desktops, browser sophistication and use of native apps, every day we learn of new ways to push the limits of what defines a well-crafted UI. When used correctly, motion can be a key utility in helping your users achieve their goals.
Affinity, the popular set of creative apps, shall soon be available for Windows users as well. So far, Affinity apps were available only for Mac users.
As per the official announcement, Affinity have already developed an alpha build of their software that has been running on Windows successfully. As such, in a couple of months from now, we can expect the beta versions to arrive.
To quote:
With the Windows versions basically being replicas of what we have done on Mac, including 100% file compatibility, it should improve adoption and file sharing ability for everyone in the future. And importantly we’ve done this with an entirely separate team of Windows developers so it’s not compromising progress of the Mac versions (as it happens we’ve got a couple of great updates to Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo for you in the works right now).
You can learn more about this development here. Alternatively, you can follow the forum discussions about Affinity for Windows here.
What do you think of this step by Affinity? Share your views in the comments below.
In late 2014, Serif released Affinity Designer to the world. In early 2015, they followed that success with the release of Affinity Photo, the would-be Photoshop-killer. It seems to have worked out pretty well for them.
While software packages like Pixelmator and The Gimp have failed to make any serious dent in the Photoshop market, Affinity software comes with the full weight of Serif behind it. They have the means to make a great product, keep it updated, and most of all, support it (especially important in the professional sector).
Even better, each app only costs $50 USD, and that’s a one-time price. That’s more than reasonable, considering… ahem… some other companies’ pricing policies.
The only problem thus far has been the fact that Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo were Mac-only. Needless to say, Windows customers are interested. Who doesn’t want great software at a reasonable price?
According to Ashley Hewson, Serif’s Managing Director:
Pretty much any article, blog or social post about our Affinity apps now seems to attract a rush of comments from users asking why we don’t make them available on Windows.
No kidding.
Well, your prayers, demands, and pleading comments have availed much, friends! As you may have guessed from the title, Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo are both on their way. In fact, they’re nearly feature-complete, and there’s a beta program in place.
The betas are free too. If you want a piece of the action, sign up here.
Now, Mac users might be thinking something like, “Hey… they said the Affinity apps were ‘built for Mac’. What gives?” You needn’t worry. The original development team is still working on the Mac version, and only on the Mac version, in fact. Even as I write, the Mac team is lining up a bug-fix update, followed by a feature update.
The Windows version isn’t a port, either. It is being built from the ground up by a separate development team. It will be their job to ensure complete file compatibility, and keep up with the features.
All in all, this is fantastic news for designers. More competition in the marketplace will lead to further innovation, and lower the likelihood of any company getting a total monopoly. Plus, we get cheaper options, and can work with whatever makes us most comfortable.
But now, I must ask the question that’ll make Serif executives groan: When’s the Linux version due?
HTML5 templates are commonly used both by non tech-savvy developers and professionals, who are pressed for time. Not only can they give a swift kick-start to their sites, but also take good care of many critical issues. Performance in different browser versions, indexation of pages, load times, security, – it’s just the beginning of the list with all the advantages that HTML5 designs offer to users.
Not long ago we published a roundup of 25 free HTML5 templates. Today, we’d like to supplement those freebies with 25 alternative solutions of premium quality. This selection offers templates intended for multiple business niches and matching preferences of even the choosiest aesthetes. If you can’t find your specific niche here, feel free to check more ready-made HTML5 designs. Thanks to extensive customizability, you can bring unlimited changes to their visuals.
Although the HTML5 templates featured below are unique in their essence, all of them are united by some common qualities. They are essential to giving your company a competitive edge on the web at present. Content focus, readable typography, eye-friendly palette, responsive design, dynamic animations, sticky navigation, – all these tricks can let you build a site that would be easy to use to find prospects.
Look through 25 premium HTML5 website templates below and choose the one that can help your business strive and succeed in cyberspace.
1. Modicate Multipurpose Website Template
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Modicate can be used to build a site of any kind, be it a portfolio, blog or store. This multipurpose HTML5 template comes with 50+ pre-designed pages for virtually any purpose, from pricing and product catalog to coming soon and 404. There are also various UI elements, web forms, live search option, smooth CSS3 animations, transition effects, and much more.
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2. Studio Light Website Template
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Try this responsive HTML5 template to promote high-tech devices on the web. It features a background video to present your products in action, which is a good complement to a page-wide slider and carousel. A pre-defined block with a horizontal timeline can reveal your company’s progress at multiple stages of its work.
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3. Arche Website Template
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Arche is a mobile-friendly HTML5 template by TemplateMonster meant for architectural bureaus and interior design firms. Thanks to its image-rich design, your projects can speak for themselves, while its unusual layout structure adds zest to the content presentation. A slider, carousel, online chat, live search, and contact form make up this template, turning it into a full-fledged solution for your site.
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4. Photographer Portfolio HTML5 Template
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Create a portfolio of unmatched professionalism with this premium HTML5 template. Its creative design boasts a page-wide slideshow with round thumbnails, mosaic gallery, pre-loaders, ghost elements, and many other visual tricks. Services are framed in boxes and presented with icons to improve the visual hierarchy of content.
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5. Consulting Responsive Website Template
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This content-packed HTML5 template sets an austere yet friendly tone thanks to warm, orange accents and parallax backgrounds. Its responsive layout is supplied with all the effective instruments of web design, from a large intro area and gallery to video integration and partners’ block. To personalize this template, you can use a built-in switcher that will help you change colors with a single click.
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6. Yacht Charter HTML5 Template
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The skeleton of this grid-based template utilizes a mix of HTML5, CSS3, jQuery and SASS techniques of web development. To get in touch with visitors, you can add a contact form, live chat functionality, and Google map to your site. For better customer engagement, the content is supported with large, high-resolution images.
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7. Industrial Responsive Website Template
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This responsive HTML5 template can be used to build industrial sites of any topic, e.g. steel production, civil engineering, mining, and many others. Its layout features a sticky header and mega footer, where you can display contacts, services, news, testimonials, social links, and much more. By means of a built-in customizer, it’s possible to switch between different color choices right at the frontend.
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8. Bus and Coach Hire Website Template
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Promote your transportation services online with this HTML5 website template. Its image-heavy design makes skilful use of tiled blocks spiced up with a parallax effect for greater dynamism. Using this responsive template, you can also equip your site with a sticky dropdown menu, online chat, Google fonts, back-to-top button, Google map, and much more.
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9. Business Website Template
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Build a modern business site with this mobile-ready and info-packed HTML5 template. Dynamic counters, pixel-perfect icons, image backgrounds, and parallax effect make it more interesting for visitors to explore the content. At the bottom of the page, they can also access follow icons to join you in social networks.
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10. Hair Salon Responsive Website Template
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This beauty salon template can make an effective business introduction with a parallax, full-screen header. Content blocks are pre-made to highlight prices, gift certificates, employees, weekly timetables of their working hours and testimonials. To sound persuasive, each testimonial comes with the photo depicting your client’s hairstyle.
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11. Construction Multipurpose Website Template
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This premium HTML5 template is a multipurpose solution for any size of company, whether industrial or business. It comes packed with 6 blog layouts, 4 eCommerce pages, 6 header variants, 4 footer styles, 4 gallery kinds, and multiple UI elements. In its core, the template is built with Bootstrap 3 and SEO-friendly code that complies with W3C standards.
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12. Motor HTML5 Template
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Here is an ultramodern HTML5 template with a visually impactful layout. You can showcase your offers in a full-width slider with striking transition effects and mosaic gallery with a filtering option. Counters are used to reveal how many members there are in your social communities.
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13. Tea Company Website Template
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Carefully thought-out pages of this template have readable typography and a soft color scheme to present the information in a clear manner. Utilization of a parallax scrolling technique allows you to impart some dynamism to the feel of your site. You can also change colors, fonts, and other UI elements of the template in its intuitive dashboard.
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14. Fashion Responsive HTML5 Template
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This fashion HTML5 template features a large intro area overlaid with menu items opening up into an elegant, semi-transparent dropdown. The rest of the design is based on a tiled layout flavored with parallax and hover effects. It adds flair to the page aesthetics, which is perfect for any fashion- or beauty-related site.
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15. Medical Responsive Website Template
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Spread the word about your medical center using this customizable HTML5 template. Its design combines a range of geometric shapes such as arcs, circles and rectangles with rounded edges. Yellow and blue accents are skillfully scattered across the template’s white layout. Such a palette can make your website interface easy on the eye.
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16. Investment Company Responsive Website Template
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Users of this Bootstrap-powered template can benefit from fixed navigation, social media integration, online chat, page-wide slideshow, and many other things. Dark grey and green accents draw attention to important details shown on the eye-friendly, light canvas. There is also a parallax block with a blurred image background bringing the message into focus.
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17. Hiking Responsive Website Template
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Try this HTML5 website template to show breathtaking images of your activities in a slider and group them by categories in a carousel. The template also has pre-defined blocks to highlight your news, events and testimonials for greater reliability. Moreover, you can mark the location of your club on a map powered by Google API.
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18. Transportation Responsive HTML5 Template
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This template’s layout starts with a parallax, page-wide header, where visitors can access ghost CTA buttons and menu items. In the blog section, post images alternate with short descriptions as on a chessboard. To improve your content presentation, the template is supplied with some effective details, particularly minimal icons, tabs, and counters.
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19. Web Design Responsive Website Template
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This tastefully devised HTML5 template is suitable for web designers, photographers, artists, and other creative souls. Its partially split layout can let you focus attention on two different content types simultaneously. An image gallery is supplied with a lightbox, which allows visitors to preview your projects on the same page.
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20. Holiday Homes for Rent Website Template
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Here is a functional template suitable for realtors and travel agents. Equipped with a color switcher, it allows for one-click customization of the default palette. Page-wide slides are overlaid with semi-transparent banners, where visitors can read some text and access a call-to-action button. A built-in gallery makes it possible to sort vacant rooms by location or any other criteria.
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21. Bakery Responsive Website Template
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This bakery HTML5 template utilizes a lazy load technique to make pages of your site load faster. It provides easy navigation thanks to a sticky bar accommodating both menu items and a live search option. In terms of visuals, this design is remarkable for soft colors, full-width slides, parallax blocks, and ample white space.
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22. Car Rental HTML5 Template
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Look at a mobile-ready HTML5 template for people involved in the automotive industry. The major area of its layout is based on split blocks. Such a structure allows you to complement text with imagery and bring these two types of content into equal focus. To display your offerings, there’s a square gallery, where images are overlaid with captions and prices.
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23. Flooring Responsive Website Template
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With the help of this template, you can build or redesign any site related to home decor. Page-wide slides, multiple banners, brands, interactive Google map, – these and other things will help you introduce your company to the fullest. By means of a color switcher, you can easily adapt the default design to your corporate identity.
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24. Email Services Responsive Website Template
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This grid-based template utilizes a mix of CSS3, LESS, jQuery, and HTML5. Pixel-perfect icons can make it easier to scan through your content, while counters enable you to unveil impressive stats. Thanks to pre-defined tables, your customers will find it a breeze to compare the prices for different packages.
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25. TransxoCo. HTML5 Template
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The last template on our list, TransxoCo, has a clean layout with flat UI elements. Its package contains pre-designed pages and sliced PSD files to facilitate the editing process. The template is executed in the best traditions of web design including page-wide imagery, focus on typography, use of parallax effect, and many others.
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We’ve shown you cool premium HTML5 templates appropriate for unlimited business niches. Choose the right one for your project and build a powerful site with ease. Good luck from our team! Do you know any other good HTML5 templates that could complement this selection? Feel free to mention them in comments.
