Lately, I've heard a few new clients mention that other web design companies are giving templates a bad rap. They say that they don't use templates, that everything they create is "custom designed" just for them. First of all, that's nonsense, especially when creating a CMS site like Joomla or Wordpress, they use templates as 'skins', easy to change according to your mood, in some cases; and they come with a few simple default templates to customize. So customizing a CMS website is really like using a template as a lump of clay; it's important to choose the right clay to start with.
I work with Joomla, so we'll talk about website templates for that CMS. Joomla has been around for a long time, and is the most popular Content Managed Site systems out there. I personally love Joomla, and have become somewhat of a master of its systems. With over 8,000 extensions (add-on programs and enhancements), Joomla can do almost anything - and there are literally thousands of templates made just for it.