Hi there, in this video we're going to talk about Templates. So we're not going to actually design the Template in this particular video, we're going to do it a little bit later on, but it's about this time that we really need to consider what is going to be part of the Template, and what is not. So let's look at our design in Illustrator. And looking at the design, there are some bits that are going to be part of the Template. Generally, it's always going to be the Header and the Footer. And it's true in our case, this is going to be the same on every page. It is the center part here that's going to be unique for every page.

So there's my Home Page. You can see down here, same Header, same Footer, but it's this middle part that's different. So, I'm going to make sure that's part of the Template, make sure the Footer is part of the Template. So I'll design those now in Dreamweaver first, and then, turn it into a Template, and it's not until then, before I start designing these inside parts. We design these inside parts first, we're going to have to pull them out, make a Template and try and put them back in, it just makes extra work for us.

The other things that are to be part of the Template is this little green box here. So I don't want this Image to change. It's going to be like this on all pages, so I'm going to make that part of the Template. If you did want that to change on every page, you're going to have to make that part of what's called the editable area, like these guys. So just identify, from your design, what's part of the Template, design it first, and then later on we'll make editable areas.

The other thing to consider is, do I actually need a template? So templates add a little bit of complexity to a site. The bonus is that, when I make a change to my Template, say I add an extra menu item, it goes through every single page, and updates it automatically. Super good if you've got a site that's say 50 pages or more, but if you've got like a 10 page website I might think twice about adding a template. Why? Because it adds that complexity for a tiny bit more speed. So, more complexity, little bit faster. Maybe not worth it for a really small website.

But we're going to do it for this one because we want to be all efficient, and official. So let's have a little look at what's going to be created in this Template. So this is one we're doing, we're going to be working towards this. Let's go to Full Live view. That's what's it's going to look like, so it's going to have our Header that we've done, it's going to have this big background image. There's going to be nothing, and then our Footer at the bottom. Let's go and create that before turning it into a Template.