In the previous chapters you learned about the basic concepts and setting up of Smarty. As a Smarty developer, you have to understand some basic procedures and know how. This chapter will guide you through the necessary steps to kick start template designing. Before starting template design, you should always be aware of the main objective of Smarty. Let me repeat again for you that the main goal of Smarty is to separate the presentation layer from business logic. This chapter will show you the best way to develop templates while keeping this goal in perspective, and at the same time satisfying your programmers, helping you to co‑operate with them, minimizing their task, and increasing the reusability of your final output.

One more thing you should be aware of is that you shouldn't mix up identities. Most often, the designers are to some extent programmers and vice versa. While designing you must totally forget that you are also a programmer and look at things only from a designer's perspective. If you mix up your identities, there will be a great risk of non-standard designs.