Hello everyone...

I'm interested in designing templates for my website... Honestly, I think my site I made is pretty good, but it doesn't stand out... I really don't want to purchase a nice template because I want to learn how to make one myself... I need everyones opinion on what I should do...

Also, I know of some free templates websites that have very good quality templates... However when I go to edit it the template is one big graphic, and I can only edit the parts that they let me...

Check out my site and tell me what you think... It's just a doorway page to the main storefront.. I didn't build the storefront... my url is in the signature....

If there is any reading material that could teach me to design my own template let me know...

Thanks!

You'd want to buy & learn something like:

photoshop (CS2 / elements) - this does the graphical side
Dreamweaver - codes it, design view which is useful..or if you can hand code it has some good features for simplisity.

Skills in these don't come over night. I've had dreamweaver for over a year & photoshop for about 6 months....and I'm learning new things for both daily!

I'd recommend good-tutorials.com for photoshop tutorials, I don't know any of the top of my head of dreamweaver.

You could always get open source programs of these but i don't know them of the top of my head either, other than "The Gimp" for graphics, but I don't know tutorials for them

Yes...get Photoshop which also comes With ImageReady....The last program will help you "slice" your design and make it ready for being edditable.
The you will have to go in a html editor...and do some tricks...