You're better off leaving regions as-is and not complicating your codebase with too many templates. A few templates should suffice for most designs and the page.tpl.php template will be reused in most circumstances. Only create new tpl.php files when you have a definite need not met by the existing markup.<br clear="all">
<div><br></div><font color="#333333">Carl Wiedemann</font><div><div><font color="#666666">Website design & development consulting | <a href="http://c4rl.ws" target="_blank">c4rl.ws</a></font></div><div><font color="#666666"><a href="mailto:carl.wiedemann@gmail.com" target="_blank">carl.wiedemann@gmail.com</a> | skype: c4rlww</font></div>
</div><br><br>