You can think of templates as like having a form letter for doing a customized mass mailing where a computer fills in the person's first name, address, city, state, and zip. However, instead of filling in the person's address or first name, the template fills in the header, logo, footer, links and stuff that's the same for all web pages instead of what's different in a form letter.

Templates are kind of the opposite of a form letter in that it fills in the opposite sections of a letter or in this case a webpage, but also has the time-saving features of being able to make changes to many pages all at the touch of a button, just like a mass mailing. And you can keep making changes over and over again to all of the webpages via a template each time you want to make a change.

NOTE: If you are currently using include files or SSI (server side includes),
please see the Include Files versus Templates web page for a comparison.

HOMESITE USERS (Global Find and Replace):
HomeSite's Find and Replace features are second to none and are a great help to all those that use it. However, templates and nested templates, only make your Homesite job easier.

With even a one (1) or two (2) level navigation menu that has for example 5 buttons with ON and OFF states, you would still have to do at least 5 separate Find and Replaces to make a change to the entire website's top navigation menu. And you have to be very careful in what you doing.

With Nested Templates, you only have to make ONE (1) change and you know exactly what you are doing and you have way less chance of making a global error. Also with the helper extension you have a WYSIWYG popup window that shows you exactly what you are doing.


BOTTOM LINE:
Even if you are expert user of HomeSite's Find and Replace, Nested Templates will still save you plenty of time, in fact, an order of magnitude of time.

• Dreamweaver HELP, F1. Navigate in the Table of Contents to the section:
  
  Working with Multiple Pages
      Managing Site Assets, Libraries, and Templates
           About Dreamweaver templates
  
  
  
• http://www.dwfaq.com/Tutorials/Basics/dwtemplates1.asp
  
  
• http://depts.washington.edu/trio/comp/howto/page/dreamweaver/mxtemp/index.shtml
  
  
• http://www.htmlcenter.com/tutorials/tutorials.cfm/64
  
  
• http://www.macromedia.com/support/dreamweaver/ts/documents/template_usage.htm
  http://www.macromedia.com/support/dreamweaver/ts/documents/template_considerations.htm
  http://www.macromedia.com/support/dreamweaver/templates.html
  
  
• http://www.epinions.com/content_141237390980
  Templates - The ability to design a template allows me to quickly create new pages using a standard layout. I create the basic page templates, then I can go back and edit the template and let the changes apply on all pages built on that template. The is great for people who constantly like to tinker with a site (that's me). It allows allows me to build new pages a lot faster.
  
  
• http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum46/592.htm