use of web page templates

Instead of creating my own web page template from scratch, which is kind
of hard to do for a beginner, I was thinking of taking the templates of
other pages and replacing the text and graphics for my own. Is this
perfectly alright to do?

 

Instead of creating my own web page template from scratch, which is kind

No. Under copyright law, it's illegal. What you're doing is called creating a
"derivative work," which is not legal.

 

So the organization of tables is copyrighted as well? A lot of pages
are set up in the following way, a section to the left for navigation, a
top bar for the logo, and the middle content page. So if I were to take
this template, this would be against copyright laws?

 

So the organization of tables is copyrighted as well? A lot of pages

The organisation of tables in the manner you describe is not copyrighted,
although these days someone might have called it theirs under a stupid IP
claim. I wouldn't worry too much about that though.

But it you *take* a template and modify it, the owner of the original
template would quite rightly be agrieved, and the law would be on their
side.

If you *create* your own template, which just so happens to look like the
standard pattern everyone else uses, that's fine.

 

They are a lot of free templates available. Just search.

Tony G. Smith
Vizros - Realistic 3D page crul plug-ins and more
Demo at http://www.vizros.com/gallery.html