Development Track

One of the downsides to component-based themes is the ability to create variations of page elements. Ultimately this means more maintenance and harder redesigns down the track. What's really needed is a building-block approach - treating page elements as modules that reuse common blocks, like lists, headers, footers, and styles, that can adapt to different skins and containers.

It's an obvious tie-in with the separation of content from skin and behavior. Which is why you bought a CMS in the first place, right? The great thing is that this approach also ties in with adaptive/responsive design (page design should be based on content blocks) and fits well with content-out design.