Under Joomla 1.5, I had found an excellent way to put together my websites. Once set up, adding new content is easy; no messing around with menus having to be extended every time I added new content. A big range of thirst part extensions were available. And one of the supplied templates "JA Purity" provided a layout I liked.
Upgrade to Joomla 2.5 has been a nightmare. Several extensions I used were not supported; some of those that were I had to re-enter all of the content because the upgrade process didn't work; and my template was no longer available.
Enter "Artisteer": a program that lets you create a Joomla template with no coding or design skills needed. Simply take a starting point, and change the parameters until it look slike what you want. Result? My template is now very close to the original that I liked and it took maybe 30 minutes. A truly excellent product!