I have an age old question. After talking to alot of different people, I have learned that the most common way to get ideas for websites is by looking at other sites on the web. Taking a few different ideas and combining them can start you off pretty good on a site. I was just wondering, I am not an artist by no means, I have always generated my own ideas but there are always better sites out there. What are you guys feelings on taking ideas from other sites up to including using their pictures or even using there site as your template. And is it against the law to do that?

The first question to ask is, "how would you feel if somebody else to do that to your own site?". Browsing websites to get an idea of what kind of layout you want to use is one thing, but stealing images and code is crossing the line. Legality aside, it's simply wrong. If you don't care about respecting somebody else's hard work and are concerned only about legal issues then you might remember than essentially any personal original creation can be copyrighted. This includes images and code. Get the details here.

Legality will be based upon what country you are from. Some countries do not repect copyrights whatsoever. If I see an idea I loke, I will incorporate it into a site if it makes sense. I never steal images ar lift code though. But, for JavaScript, I may reverse engineer the code to see how something was done, but then I always write my own version of the code from scratch so that it fits my purposes. Michael J

Michael, you have answered many questions for me over the past year. Thanks My concern is not legality nor ethical. I more or less posed a question because of curiosity. I am not an artist, like i said, but i have learned to code virtually anything. I am currently working on a site for a carpenter and he has no idea what he wants. He has no logo, color scheme or ideas at all. So I looked over the web and found a page i liked. I am thinking of using the template, including the colors, but not any of the pictures or text. More or less just the template. If I saw something that i created from scratch on someone elses site it would not bother me at all. I am not big enough to feel threatened. I do these sites to hone in on my programming skills. At this point I don't care so much for how it looks just the hard code behind it. What do you think about using someones template.

I see no harm in using someone's site as a guide just as long you don't copy their code, pictures, text, etc... If you create your own code but use their site as just a guide for ideas then I would say it would probably be fine. Websites are a form of art so naturally it is a very touchy subject. Just use your own judgement.

"My concern is not legality nor ethical" You're not concerned with legality? Tell that to your customer when the owner of the site you stole content from issues a cease and dissist order. Granted, the chances of this happening are small (depending on who you lift content from), but very real. I have NEVER copied code from any site. If I see something I like I may emulate it (i.e. build my own code from scratch) with respect to layout, placement, etc. And, I never use their color scheme. This is a big grey area. At what point are you stealing? I don't know. But, sites can and are copyrighted. Which means you cannot use their content to some extent. I think the easiest way to look at it is if you are taking something that saves you work, then you are probably stealing. Although you say you aren't going to use photos, I thouogh I'd put this out anyway. Photos can be "fingerprinted". There are tools which allow people to "crawl" the internet to find people that have stolen their photos and are using them as their own. Michael J

Michael, I appreciate the honesty. I need you to know that I have never stolen anything. I know it does not matter to you but I have never taken a photo or text. I create my own graphics in photoshop and have never taken anything from a site unless it is a free site and even then i ask permission. For the first time i used someones template. I did change it up so it is not exact but there were three colors on it that went together so i kept that color scheme. I took no pictures or text and I hard coded everything myself. It is different from the site but yet i did get the idea from it. Honestly, I just don't feel right because I did not come up with it myself. I feel that Everything should be made from scratch but I know so many people that use templates and other ideas and they are doing so well and night after night I struggle until I come up with something but I guess that is better. It is a demon I will have to fight, I guess what it comes down to is if it don't feel right, don't do it, regardless if its legal or ethical. Thanks for the advice.