If you are looking for excellent quality webpage templates then our recommendation is to check out Rockettheme.
The templates not only look stylish and professional but they are also very flexible, extensible and easy to manage. Additionally, they have many unique features and user controls.

Rockettheme templates utilise the new 960 grid system, which allows much more control over the layout of the website.
As an example Rockettheme templates are capable of 36 possible combinations for the layout of the mainbody/sidebars alone!
Additionally, you are not forced to use the same grid layout for every page.
Unique Layout controls allow you to configure your layout without having to do math or ever create a 'broken' layout.

If your serious about being web designer, Rockettheme have special memberships for web designers for $300. Not only do they give you unlimited entitlements to their templates they also allow you to promote your Rockettheme template customisation services to potential customers. It is very important to have a niche market if you want to succeed as a web designer.

To give you an insight into how advanced their templates are, check out the features list for Quasar - one of Rockettheme's free web page templates.

• Free and GPL
• Gantry Framework 2.0
• RTL Support
• 6 Style Variations
• SEO Optimised Layout
• Custom Typography
• CSS Dropdown Menu
• 4 Module Variations
• 60 Module Positions
• FF3.5, Opera 9.6, Safari 4, IE6,7,8 Compatible
• W3C XHTML 1.0 Transitional. W3C CSS 3 Valid
• Adobe Fireworks PNG source included

As a web designer I sometimes look around for webpage templates that I can use in order to cut costs and increase the productivity of my business.
After searching the Internet for sometime, it became apparent to me that most of the webpage templates available were poorly implemented and the vendors did not really take the time to consider who might be using the templates. They lacked flexibility, extensibility and very importantly, manageability.

When choosing web page templates there are several factors, which should be considered.

To start with it is very important that the design of the navigation should allow room for you to add and remove links as you choose without running out of space or affecting the aesthetics of the design. I was surprised when looking at some of the commercial web page templates available as many of the templates actually used images for menu items. Admittedly the designer has greater control over the design by using images but if you want to change a menu item yourself you will have to open up a graphics program such as photoshop, edit the image, and re-upload it to the server. This completely defeats the point of buying a web page template if you have to start designing stuff yourself.

Additionally, having images for menu items hinders search engine optimisation and accessibility. The text on the images cannot be read by either search engines or assistive devices such as screen readers, braille reader etc. This will inevitably effect the productivity of your website.

Secondly, many of the webpage templates available were built using tables. The use of tables for creating the layout of a website is a technique that has been replaced in favour of a more flexible and efficient method. However, as you can imagine many of the template vendors don't want to remove these old table based templates from their product catalogs. Table based designs are again bad for search engine optimisation, accessibility and also make the website hard to update and manipulate.

Another very important factor relates to the extensibility of the site. Many of the template vendors provide multi-page web page templates or "full sites" as they are called. However, the chances that one of these "full sites" will suit your needs is pretty slim. If you want to create a new page you have to duplicate one of the existing pages. This will prove very cumbersome should you need to regularly add and update pages.

So what is the answer?

Webpage templates for Content Management Systems!

What is a Content Management System (CMS)?

Think about Mypace, Facebook etc. You can login and edit pictures, text etc. The changes will appear when you view your profile.
Facebook and myspace both have a system in which you can manage the content yourself. A Content Management Systems can give your website this functionality.

There are many advantages of using a CMS such as flexibility, extensibility, manageability etc.

As well as being easier to update and maintain there are also a plethora of plugins and extensions available at your finger tips. These include social networking applications, shopping cart applications, weather reports, newsletter management tools etc. The list is endless.

I use a CMS called Joomla for practically every site I build. There are other good content management systems such as Wordpress and Drupal but I am more familiar with Joomla.

Joomla is an open source CMS meaning that it is free to use. Yes. That's right. It is 100% free! Open source software is essentially built by highly skilled hobbyists from all around the globe, who put their heads together to make free software for us to use. Nice!

As content management systems become more popular there are now web page template vendors making templates for the Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal etc. And they work! And from what I have seen many of them look very nice too. As mentioned before, the highest quality Joomla web page templates I have come across are from a vendor called RocketTheme

In order to use their templates, you will of course need to install the Joomla CMS onto a web server. After that It's pretty much plain sailing. Simply login to the administrator section, add articles, edit menu items, add plugins, change colors etc.

Should you require any help or advice regarding the integration of Joomla templates please feel free to send me an email via the contact form.