Well, start of by reading this Article on Dreamweaver templates:

http://www.squidoo.com/dreamweaver_templates

Now that’s you’ve done that (you have read it right?) Let me summerise it for you.

As the article explains there are basically 2 types of templates.

One is nothing more than a webpage WITHOUT the content. so it can be used exactly like a balnk sheet of paper with nice border around it.

The other has editable regions which are used to hold content which is unique to each page.

You can use either of them and they’ll both work for you.

It’s just that the REAL dreamweaver templates have that extra functionality that will save you hours when you’re creating your website.

So, if your using templates that you’ve downloaded online chances are they’re just normal blank web pages, unless they specify that they’re Dreamweaver Templates.

The way to tell the differnce is that a true dreamweaver template will finish with a .dwt extension.

You’ll find more tutorials on templates and how to use them here:

http://dreamweaverbeginnertips.com/

http://www.dreamweavermadesimple.com/