What are Joomla!1.5 Templates

A template controls the overall look and layout of a site. It is in effect the 'design skin' of the website - the aesthetic (the look, feel and layout) of the site.  It is NOT the content that is on your site.  It includes the background images, colours, all the font styles, spacing & location of different areas of the site where information (content) will be placed.  The Joomla template gives the whole website a consistent look and feel that ensure your website will look truely professional.
The Joomla!1.5 Template provides a framework to bring together common content elements of the website (Joomla terms for these = components, modules and plugins) and the cascading style sheet (CSS) for the website.

Summary – a template controls the look of your site and makes your life a great deal easier when creating new pages.

When Joomla! is first installed several standard templates are automatically included. However, you will not want your website to 'look' the same as someone else's by leaving your site running under one of these standard templates.
You can find many templates on offer in our Joomla Template e-Shop. Some are available without charge for you to try out and see how to put a template on your site for free and to see how they work with your content.  Please also carefully see the information regarding module locations.  It is also possible for you to learn to modify these template to tweek/customise them to make them truely your own.

Templates are managed with the Template Manager, which is located on the Extensions menu in the back-end (administrator panel) area of your site.