Using Site Templates and SSI
Templates are easy to use. They basically give you the framework, all you have to do is include the content. So, if you are not the most creative person in the world, or just don't have the knowledge to build a cool site, templates are a good, inexpensive solution. SSI or Server Side Includes are an old technology, but if you are a beginner and don't have a lot of experience or time, it still functions adequately.
Simply download the template, modify the content and upload your site. I suggest using the templates here, or going to a site like 4SiteTemplates.com or 4Templates.com. 4SiteTemplates offers more of a selection, but either will work.
Once you've selected the template that will work for you and insure that you have the software required to update the template, download the template to your computer. Using a tool like Dreamweaver (my personal favorite) or FrontPage, you may then edit the content of your page. My personal suggestion is to use a database or text file (with SSI) to hold you content, that way you don't have to modify the page each time you make a change to your content, you simply update the text file or database entry. I'm partial to using a database as I am a programmer and it just makes things much easier. Setting up a simple Microsoft Access database can save you plenty of time, it will require that you learn how to program a line or two of ASP, but Dreamweaver makes it so easy that is will be seemless to you. If you choose to use text files with SSI, Dreamweaver also makes this easy. Simply define an "Editable Area" and assign a text file to it. You can have several editable areas on each page. Text files and SSI's give the illusion of having database driven content without having to learn how to use a database program and will probably be the easiest way to start.
Server Side Includes (SSI)
Like I said earlier this is kind of an old technology, but if you are just starting out this is sufficient and will give your clients (or yourself depending on who you are creating the site for) control over the content of the site.
For example, say you're working on a church's site and the pastor wants the opening page (home page) to have several editable areas (or areas that must be updated) weekly. You can use a template and define your editable areas and assign a server side include. A server side include is no more
than a text file that resides on your server, who's content is viewable when linked into a webpage. If you've ever used mail merge in MS Word or Wordperfect, this uses the same principle. For this example, lets say we make the middle of our template's editable area a 2X2 table like this:
