Hello,
DotNetNuke supports both portal and page templates - a portal template can control the creation and population of an entire portal e.g. perhaps you would have a standard setup per department that included common content and modules , and use this to create a portal per department .
As for page templates, they're used when creating a page and can include content also. You can create them by hand (see
http://www.dnnstuff.com/Articles/tabi... for an example), but if you're doing that be careful that you make dotnetnuke aware of them (
http://dnnuke.blogspot.com/2008/11/cr...). However, I find it much easier to simply use the UI i.e. create a page, add the content & modules I desire and then click the "current page" tab in the control panel and press the export button. This will allow you to name the template and decide if you want content or just the settings. Now when you go to add a page you'll see that template listed in the template dropdown.
Note: dnncreative have what looks like a fairly exhaustive set of videos @
http://www.dnncreative.com/Howtocreat... if you're a subscriber.
I don't believe we offer onsite demos in the uk - i'd recommend you email
sales@dnncorp.com and see if they can help you - perhaps they can answer your queries or maybe arrange a remote demo (e.g. via gotomeeting)
Finally, DNN Corp hired a fulltime UX/UI person a while back, who has already been a great help in this area (ironing out some of the complications/developer layouts in 5.5) and will be working on this area in future releases.
Thanks,
Cathal