A w3c recommendation is that for website layouts and design layers should be used instead of tables. In lots of WYSIWYG HTML editors you don't get the built-in functionality to easily create layout with layers.
So I've found a very good starting place for creating a website. It's a set of "wireframes" from which to build your web page layout.
They're using XHTML and CSS.
Click here to visit the site and get the CSS templates.
