Help:Subst

To substitute a template into a page, use {{subst:TEMPLATENAME}} -- this will render the template and insert its wikitext into the page directly, after which you won't be using a template anymore.

This is the right thing to do when your custom template may need editing (and you don't want to edit the master template that everyone uses to get started), or where you won't ever want the template you use today to be updated by a template-change tomorrow.

• times to substitute a template : adding a welcome or other static message to someone's talk page; generating an entire page or section from a template (used to make editing easier).
• times to use a dynamic template (not substituting) : when adding an infobox or other style element that should always be uniform across the entire wiki. Leaving it dynamic allows a single change to the template to update every instance where it is called.