ur right xiphoid.

either ways is great. i personally never edit the templates.. but instead i mod vbulletin.style file and import it with a script into the database. i do this because i want to avoid any html code mods that are present in every new release.
as you know, the upgrade does not change the custom templates. also i saw that VB recommends to revert the templates to original. so that's why i decided to use this little trick to update my templates.