How Reusable Should The Page Templates Be?

As you plan your site, you can create new page templates for each section, or you can reuse page templates that are already being used in other sections. When you design to use a small number of page templates, you then have fewer assets to manage, which makes the entire Web site easier to manage.

By reusing page templates, you can maintain the look and feel of your Web site in one or just a handful of page templates, and the changes are seen immediately across the site.

By creating new and unique page templates in each section, you might have more flexibility in the design of the site layout as a whole. You can create a unique design or slightly modify a different page template to accommodate the content that display there. However, if you make significant global changes to the site, then you have to modify multiple page templates. This might become a repetitive task that lends itself to mistakes and inconsistency.

If you choose multiple page templates, you should try to reuse fragments with referenced snippets as much as possible so that you can make global changes to just one or a handful of fragments.

However, through thoughtful use of subtemplates with the placeholders, it is typically possible to reduce the number of page templates.