This is just a general design question: do you designers out there start absolutely from scratch each and every time you design a new site, or do you "recycle" some elements of code, ie: general rules for making the page center, etc. I'm just wondering what individual work and design procedures people have. TIA!

I don't know about everyone else but there is one major factors for me as to how much I reuse images and code, that is price. If someone wants a cheap site I reuse as much as I can to cut down on time, but if someone is willing to pay good money I try to make it as original as possible.

The only thing i re-use if it matches the style are images, for the simple reason that image design isnt somthing that im too hot on and i dont like doing it that much. Most other things are from scratch, unless it comes down to using scripts, no point in re-doing one from scratch if you can mod your 1st one to get the desired effect

I re-use code all the time. I have set up skeleton layouts for 2 and 3 column sites that can apply no matter what the final refinements may be. With nearly 50 sites in my work queue, I can ill-afford to keep reinventing the wheel and my sites do NOT look cookie cutter in the least.

"Re-inventing the wheel" is counter-productive most of the time, IMO.

When I set up a design, of course I re-use components. When you learn how to set up a three column fluid layout using div's and CSS, you re-use the code the next time you set one up. That doesn't mean the site looks the same. Take a look at www.csszengarden.com/

What I do is like LadynRed. Make skeletons. I also put the components on a coding web page for quick reference and copy and paste.

The whole idea behind programming language libraries, OOP, Frameworks, Java Beans etc. is code reuse. Any company or person that doesn't do so, is wasting time and effort.

I re-use code all the time. I have set up skeleton layouts for 2 and 3 column sites that can apply no matter what the final refinements may be. With nearly 50 sites in my work queue, I can ill-afford to keep reinventing the wheel and my sites do NOT look cookie cutter in the least.

Yup, here, too and I've never had any complaints and it helps TREMENDOUSLY! And when someone wants something in a style I hadn't done before, I do it up, and save it in my "code collection"! It's fun watching it grow, too and saves so much time.