I'm relatively new to Joomla so forgive me if this is a simple question. Anyway, I was given a template made from scratch to work on. This template has multiple pages such as index(obviously), blog and contact. My problem is aside from the index, none of my other layouts for the template appear. All I get is a white page. I'm suspecting it has something to do with my url (.../joomlaproj/templates/mytemplate/contact.php) Is there something I should add or change on my php file to make them appear. I've tried moving the contact and blog files outside the template folder but it still appears as an empty page. Why is this happening?
I think you might have misunderstood what Joomla is and how it works. It's a Content Management System and thus does not produce a static like website with simple PHP pages. You don't add each file such as contact.php and blog.php to the templates folder. You install an extension from the Joomla Extensions Directory according to what you require, create a menu item via the backend and assign the component to it.
Take a look at the Joomla docs to give you more details overview of it:
http://docs.joomla.org/Getting_Started_with_Joomla!
If you were given a choice of what to use for this project such as Joomla, Wordpress, custom coded etc, then have a quick think about how big the site is going to be. If it primarily a blogging site which will also include a contact form, then your best choice might be Wordpress. If it will contain more, such as a forum or any other more complex systems, then Joomla will be your best bet.
Hope this helps