I had a thread about a free template that I am giving away why was it deleted? Did I break a rule?

I think your thread was deleted for a couple of reasons. First it doesn't really belong in the web design forum. That forum is for discussions about about web design and not to promote your templates.

Second it was your first post here. Like all forums we get our share of spammers. One indication that someone is spamming is when they add links in their first post. I'm not implying you're a spammer, but when a moderator has to decide if a thread was meant to help others or self promote often the member's history of posting goes into the decision. In your case there was no history of quality posts since you hadn't posted previously.

As a rule we don't allow all people to post links that are self promotional. It can seem like a gray area at times since we clearly do let people post links back to their sites at times. But usually it's because the link adds extra value to an already good post or is necessary to help someone fix a bug on your site.

I think with your post it was seen as being started for self promotional reasons as opposed to being started to honestly help others here.

Having said all that it's not a big deal and there are places where it's ok to post similar links. For example we allow people to post links to free blog themes in that forum.

We really don't have a place here to post links to free templates. The best thing to do is create a forum signature with the link. You could say something simple like 'free templates' or 'free css templates'

Then every time you post the link will be included. However if the mods here think the only reason you're posting is just to have more posts displaying signature links one of us will likely end up deleting them.

I hope the explanation helps and no harm no foul.