General Questions Regarding Templates

I have some questions regarding templates, and couldn't find the specifics of what I'm looking for, and didn't know where else to ask, so I'm plopping it here.

1. Are most of the templates here created with slices in Photoshop? Or through another method?

2. What sort of guidelines are there for template creation?

3. Is there any reason that a template could not be created using hand written XHTML, or other tools such as (but not limited to!) Visual Studio (for the .NET environment), Expressions Web, or any other tool out there?

4. Is it allowed for the creator of a template to request/require that the site using the template notify the creator when they use the template?

The reason that I am asking is that I am a community college student, and would like to build up a portfolio (if that is allowed here!) and would be willing to design templates for people to use.

I don't want to violate any guidelines, and would move slowly into doing something like this (likely, designing some of the requests on my local machine, and just see what I came up with, how easy they were to edit for another user, etc) before stepping up to try to fill a request.

If anyone has any feedback, answers, advice, etc, I'd be glad to hear it!

 

1. I can't speak for this community as I'm new myself. But for what templates goes, I never EVER slice in photoshop. I create a design that can be created in either css2 or css3. The reason for this is loading, bandwidth etc. etc..

2. Not sure I understand?

3. Handwritten XHTML or .NET is easy enough if you know how to. But I would (if you decide to code in .net as I do) - get visual studio.
You could also use Dreamweaver or notepad++.

4. Yeah I guess that's a part of the whole "copyright" thingy. If you make something and I use it (with your permission), I would typically add credits.