What are Templates?
Templates in web development are pre-made web pages or a set of HTML web pages that editors can use to place their content. It’s what defines the markup on your website, and you’re in control of the output.
Templates are also often used to refer to themes, skins or starter kits. Instead of building all of your templates from scratch you can use pre-built templates. Using a theme to get started is great to get your website up-and-running faster. With the open source code of Umbraco you can even modify the templates to make them uniquely yours and look like you want it to.
If you want to try out the templates built by Umbraco HQ, you can try The Starter Kit.
Umbraco templates
Umbraco templates in the CMS are built on the concept of Razor views from ASP.NET MVC. What makes templating in Umbraco different is model data.
Every document type you create in Umbraco will have its own template if you choose so. And once a document type is created it will build a public class in the backoffice of Umbraco.
You can easily access and display document type properties in your templates using IPublishedContent which makes it easy and fast to build the presentation of your website.
When templating in Umbraco, the output is controlled completely by you. If you want to get started with building your own Umbraco template you can follow the guide in the Umbraco documentation about creating templates.
Umbraco themes and skins
Because Umbraco is built differently than other content management systems, you have complete freedom over how you want your content to be displayed. We've even gone as far as keeping that decision 100 % up to you out-of-the-box when you install Umbraco.
If you want to get started faster with themes, skins or starter kits, we recommend looking at some of the Umbraco packages available. These will help you get started with some pre-built pages and features such as navigation elements. You can find a list over at our.umbraco.com. You can also find Umbraco themes and skins from third party sources.
Templates and themes by Umbraco HQ
Most templates and themes out there are built by the community and third party sources.
To help you get started, there are 2 themes built and managed by Umbraco HQ - one of which can be freely downloaded on our.umbraco.com.
Umbraco Starter Kit
The Umbraco Starter Kit is the default starter kit for Umbraco Cloud and can also be downloaded for the Umbraco CMS.
The Starter Kit contains a simple website that contains many of the basic features that will help you get started. You'll get different page templates for the home page, blog, product catalog, contact page, and more. It's the perfect way for you to get familiar with how templates work in Umbraco and how to edit them. If you're new to Umbraco we highly encourage you to take it for a spin and have a go at editing the templates.
If you want to test it out on a demo website without having to download and install anything, you can start a 14-day free Cloud trial and pick Sample Site during signup. Alternatively, you can download it from our.umbraco.com or directly in the "Packages" section in the Umbraco backoffice.