I would like to try this when my board starts getting active. Or when you make a setting for templates to exclude (unless you've already done that). ;)

Done it of course, with one of these neat vB options you can add to your product.xml

And you only need them to exclude when you're using the option to save certain templates in a seperate file anyway.

Are the default settings the recommended way to go then?

You did not reply to my question.
Can you give me more details? Thanks.

I'm not sure what the problem with [template] search and replace plugins is supposed to be, but I have this installed on my test forum atm, and all my plugins seem to work fine.

There are no default settings ;)

Can either turn the template cache on or off, and saving to seperate files for bigger templates on or off.

You don't have to clear the folder, it clears itself when you edit templates. There is no clutter in the folder, no need to clear it. Every file in that folder is being used, even if some are used rarely (like not all people visit faq.php).

Did you activate the "save templates to seperate files" option?

Thanks Orban. :)

No.
.
.

Only that option can cause problems with addons that use str_replace($template...)

Oh okay. I'm not planning to use that option, without going through 10+ pages I'm not really sure why it's there.