Hi developing,
I seem to be ahead of you by a couple of hours. You have a couple of problems;
1. you need to delete the space between the “[” and the content ie:
[nggallery id=1 template=sample1]
2. you need to create a gallery and upload pictures into it before you will see any results. To do this go back to your main control panel and you will find a new section in the left hand column named “Gallery”
Once you have the gallery in place and the images uploaded use the template statement, but look at the software’s website and you can see real template id s.
Hope that helps