i dont know if this is the best place to put it but im going to make several different templates for my site and give users an option of which one to choose.

the only way i can think of doing this is by basically replicating the site several times under different folders with a shared database when a user finds there preferred template they will just be directed to the site under that template

is there any better ways to do this than just duplicating the site.

and if not is there anyway to atleast make it so there site wont be like
www.site.com/template/index.php

thanks

Store the template in use in a cookie/session AND in the user database so the same template can be used when the user logs on.

The template(s) has placeholders (like BBCode works) for the content that are replaced by serverside code with content from the database.

seems a little complex. how much do you think it would cost to hire a freelancer to do this

That would probably depend on how complicated your templates where.

Basically you are asking about something that just about every blogging tool, forum and CMS is capable of "out of the box".

the differences in templates would just be image and css colour changes. im currently using the clip-share script

So you probably only need to switch stylesheets.

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/alternate/
http://blogs.sitepoint.com/css-simple-style-switcher/