We like picaflor azul's ALL BUSINESS template - 1.5-compatible, and very easy to re-style and customise.

As far as site backups are concerned...

The FILE SYSTEM is independent of the DATABASE.

We use a host that provides 6-hour backups on the file system - a HUGE comfort as I had to restore a file yesterday. Their system allows for restoration of single files, folders, or the whole site's file system. Great feature of their hosting and takes a huge headache out of doing backups ourselves.

We run auto-backups on the databases using a similar system.

If you are not lucky enough to have a host that does these 6-hourly backups, then you should FTP the entire site to your hard drive. You should then create a dbase backup (possibly do this through phpMyAdmin) and bring that off the server too.