Best Practices for Creating & Integrating Templates

[actolearn]

Hello,

I plan on creating lots of templates (hundreds if not more) and then embedding them in other templates. i'm curious as to if there are some best practices for doing this. for instance, i read that use of plugins increases load time, so i've created a single plugin that points to an include file that contains all the php code that creates variables that fetch templates.

is there anything else that i should be aware of if i plan on creating lots of templates and embedding them in other templates? are there any best practices, or common mistakes, regarding this?

any help is most appreciated. thanks!