First off, if you decide to make a website from scratch then you have to invest in time and maybe few frustrations, if you try to to build your website based on a template, then you might have to deal with secret codes injected to the template and quite possibly, numerous other websites that have the same template as you yours. Personally, I'd like to do it both ways. I'll do a quick Google search for a free template, I'd like them simple and clean so that they're easier to customize. Then I would fire up Dreamweaver or Notepad, and do some stuff on the codes, add a few graphics here and there and then boom! I like to do it that way because, first of all is it saves time. You already got the code, the design is ready, all you need to do is make it like your own. Second is, its easier to work on something that is already structured. I for one am not a fan of codes, so having a set of codes already done makes it much faster, and I'm sure it will be a breeze for someone that is a skilled coder and web designer. But it all comes down to what you're comfortable on.