You look at any SharePoint 2013 demo intranet site, and you will instantly realize that this new version of SharePoint offers a spectrum of significantly improved, out-of-the-box templates with a fresh architecture rendering an enriched experience. Navigation here is driven by taxonomy and the content is not displayed by location, but is based on tagging, enabling the users to reuse it in multiple places even though authored at just one.

The Friendly URLs lack the distinctive aspx tail giving a pleasing effect, specifying only the relatable content based on metadata and taxonomy.

The SharePoint 2013 templates have something new compared to SharePoint 2010, and have also discarded some redundant and less popular ones.

The major two templates they have changed with SharePoint 2013 against 2010 are:
1. Group Work template, and
2. Personalization size template

The Group Work site template is not available anymore as a site option. The Group Work lists feature is discontinued too. Many features on this template were redundant as they are already present in the Team site template. Also, Group Work site template was not very popular or in demand with the users. With this alteration, the list of templates is simplified when the user wishes to create a new site collection.

Apart from the Group Work site template, another template which has been discontinued is the personalization site template, and the reasons are exactly the same as for eliminating the Group Work site template. This site was not widely popular, and these similar features are already provided in the Team Site template.

The most widely used templates available with the SharePoint 2013 portal are:

€ Team Site: This, as widely known, is the most common SharePoint site template, primarily used by teams to create, share, organize and collaborate documents and information.
€ Blog Site: A site on which multiple users share ideas, opinions and thoughts.
€ Project Site: Overall projects are managed by this template. Any relevant information related to the project, like, the goal, progress, latest status, information, etc. are projected here.
€ Developer Site: This template majorly helps the users in building, testing and publishing their apps.
€ Community Site: A great platform to create communities about different subjects and invite people to participate to share ideas.

Examples of enterprise site templates are:

€ Document Center: Widely used for management of documents.
€ Records Center: Used for creation, disposal and safe long term storage of records.
€ Business Intelligence Center: Provides access to Business Intelligence content.
€ Enterprise Search Center: Mostly used for searches on many levels.
€ The eDiscovery Center: Content for investigative matters can be managed with this template.
€ My Site Host: Used to host personal sites and public profile pages.
€ Community Portal: This new portal can be used to discover a wide range of communities.
€ Visio Process Repository: Majorly used to view and share Visio process diagrams.
€ Basic Search Center: The ever-faithful basic search experience.

Some widely popular publishing site templates are:

€ Product Catalog: This template is used for management of product catalogs.
€ Enterprise Wiki: Used for publishing vast information.
€ Publishing Portal: This is used to create a large intranet portal or internet-facing sites.

Of course, if you still need a customized design to create your own template, SharePoint 2013 is an excellent tool to work with and achieve desired results.