MySource makes a distinction between "Templates" (which are basically php classes defining how to add/edit/remove data for pages) and "Designs" (which are what most of us would call 'Templates' -- ie. HTML with some tags indicating where dynamic content will go).

I found the "Design" concept to be quite flexible to a point -- you can pretty much add in any HTML that you like.

It is also fairly easy to make your own "Templates" as you can just copy the class structure for another template and modify the php to suit your needs.

The "Standard" template has just one body content area. If you want to do any layout inside that body content area you need to use HTML or you can use the simple table builder that's built into the bodycopy editor.

While that's quite flexible, I would have liked to see the ability to have multiple body content areas inside a page. Otherwise I'm sure I'll find myself having to build the same table structures over and over again for the same kinds of pages (ie. all 'press release' articles will have the same layout and i don't want to have to build it again every time i want to add a new press release).

So just as a test I built a php template defining 2 body content areas and attached the new template to my test site -- and straight away I had 2 content areas in my admin interface ("backend").

I still haven't figured out how to get these to work in the "Design" (ie the front end -- what users will see). MySource combined my two bodycontent areas into one single bodycontent, ie. so far things haven't improved at all. But I reckon it must be fairly straightforward..(?) Unfortunately the technical documentation is a bit thin on this stuff... (all the docs on the mysource site are aimed at end-users, not developers).

Squiz.net sells a layout editor module called "Fixed Template" which looks like it will do what i want for $2500. If I can get past this minor hurdle I'm tempted to write a clone called "Free Template" ;)