Working with Sharepoint Portal Server 2003 Area Templates

Working with Sharepoint Portal Server 2003 Area Templates: "Working with Sharepoint Portal Server 2003 Area Templates
There are some documentation out there on Sharepoint Portal Server 2003 (SPS) Area Templates. None however gave me the full overview I needed in order to be able to customize my Areas in the ways I wanted. This article sums up lessons learned in working with Area Templates.
This article applies to working with Areas. Areas are a feature of SPS, not Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) that ship with Windows 2003 server. "