Template Web Site Companies

Question

Do any of you ever use Templates as a jump start on your web designs? I have pretty much done everything custom other than Project Seven's De Ja Vu on one of my own sites. However, I'm considering signing up with a company like DreamTemplate for those times when I need to speed up the process, and custom is not essential.
If any of you can share your experience or hearsay I would be grateful for the feedback.
Linda

Answer 1

Murray *ACE* wrote:
Templates do make your life much easier.  I use the following scheme....
First, I mentally separate the page layout into three sections:
1.  Stuff that will not change for the life of the site (i.e., the basic
structural elements)
2.  Stuff that *could* change from time to time (e.g., navigation elements,
burst advertisements, section-specific navigation, etc.)
3.  Stuff that *will* change from one page to the next
Then I create a template containing all class1 elements.  Next I create
server-side include files containing all class 2 elements and place them on
the template as needed.  Note - some of the class 2 elements may be
"section-specific elements", and their placement on the template will be
subject to the next item.  Finally, I insert editable regions to cover the
class 3 items, INCLUDING the section-specific navigation.
This allows me to just cookie-cut the rest of the site.  I estimate that
even for fairly large sites, about 80% of my work goes into planning and
creating this template file.
And - for sites with more than about 100 pages, templates can become quite tedious unless they are used in this fashion.
This is useful information so I've marked it helpful. I don't actually use a "Template" file, nor have I mastered .php, so my workflow might be a little different from yours. Thanks to your past advice I have learned to use SSIs but as you know find them limited and not much different from DW Library Items.
Thanks to you my most recent client websites are validating (XHTML)! :-)