There are many who like to have a comfortable setup for their website development and are many website development companies that are always looking for a simple website method.

For all of these kinds of people, it is to have the most awesome features of WordPress.

• Several new plug-ins to experiment,
• Unlimited access to control,
• Custom designing,
• Custom functionality,
• Flexible structure and interface and
• An Integrated structure of the whole website.

What are the templates file in WordPress?

The templates are files which tell WordPress theme how to display different types of content in a systematic manner.

When every time someone sends a request to view a part of your website, then the WordPress web pages platform will figure out what content they want to see and how that specific part of your website should be shown to the audience.

Moreover, the WordPress will attempt to use the most suitable template file present in your theme which should be decided on the basis of the hierarchy order.

• It is also known as the WordPress page template hierarchy.
• The WordPress page template hierarchy is a whole list of several template files.
• The WordPress is familiar with that and they are ranked to determine which file takes priority over another. It works like any kind of decision tree.

When the WordPress tries to decide how to display a given page in the most suitable manner, then it works according to the template hierarchy.

For example:

If somebody wants to access the following URL.

Your-site.com/category/news

Then the custom WordPress theme would look for the correct template files in the following order:

1. category-{slug}.php: in this case category-news.php
2. category-{id}.php: if the category ID were 5, WordPress would try to find a file named category-5.php
3. category.php
4. archive.php
5. index.php

At the end of this WordPress custom page template hierarchy is the index.php file.

It will be used to display any type of content which does not have a more specific template file. If templates file ranks higher in the hierarchy order, the WordPress theme customization will automatically use that file in order to display the content.

What are the page templates in WordPress web pages?

For WordPress web pages, the WordPress page template plug-in is usually be named as page.php. Sometimes there is a more specific template file available named as archive.php.

The custom WordPress theme uses the same file to render the content of all pages on your website.

Sometimes it is needed to change the design, look, or functionality of individual sections of your website.

This is the place where page templates come into play.

The custom page template WordPress allow you to standardize and individualize any part of your WordPress website without affecting the rest of it.

For example there are many WordPress themes today which came with an option to change your page into the full-width size, and then add a second sidebar to it.

It can also be done through different template files.

If you are doing the same and working with different templates then it involves the editing and changing files in your active WordPress theme, so always start with a child theme when making these kinds of customizations.

It will be easy to edit and would not overwrite other things.

How to do customization of pages in WordPress custom page templates?

There are three basic ways to use the WordPress custom page templates which are described as follows:

• By adding conditional statements to an existing WordPress page template hierarchy,
• Create a specific page template which ranks higher in the hierarchy order, and
• Directly assign the templates to the specific pages.

Let’s explore all of it in depth.

Using conditional tags in the default template of WordPress web pages

There is an easy way to make page-specific changes in the WordPress theme customization’s conditional tags to any specific template which is already in use.

These tags are used to create functions which are only executed if a certain condition is met accordingly.

Then, you would add conditional tags to your active theme’s page.php file.

They would enable you to make changes limited to the home page, front page, blog page or any other page of your website.

Some of the major used conditional tags are as follows:

1. is_page( ): It is used to target a specific page and can be used with the page’s ID, title, or URL/name.
2. is_home( ): It only applies to the home page.
3. is_front_page( ): It successfully targets the front page of your website as set under Settings -> Reading
4. is_category( ): It is a condition for a category page. It can also use ID, title or URL/name like is_page( ) tag.
5. is_single( ): It is used for single posts or attachments
6. is_archive( ): It is the condition for archive pages
7. is_404( ): It is only applied to 404 error pages

– For example, when it is added to your page.php in place of the standard get_header( ); tag, then the following code will load a custom header file named as header-shop.php when displaying the page yoursite.com/product.

Code:

If (is_page ('products')) {
  get_header (‘shop’);
} else {
  get_header( );
}

– For example, these two conditions will entirely change the behavior of the different pages on your website.

Besides the loading of aforementioned shop-specific header file, it would now also load a header-about.php on a page with the ID of 42.

For all of the other pages, the standard header file applies to it as well.

Create some Page-specific files in the WordPress page template hierarchy

The conditional tags are one of the greatest ways to introduce some smaller changes to your WordPress web pages.

It can help you to create larger customizations by using many conditional statements one after the other.

One of the best ways for it is to deploy the complete WordPress page template hierarchy which would traverse a list of maximum possible template files and then one can choose what suits them the best.

The WordPress custom page template includes the following hierarchy:

Page-{slug}.php

Page-{id}.php

Page.php

index.php

The custom page templates are the ones which have been assigned to the particular page.

So, if one of those exists, the WordPress will use it whether the template files are present or not. After that, the WordPress will be finding the page template that includes ‘slug’ in it.

For example: If you include a file named as page-about.php in the themes file then it can be found in this kind of URL yoursite.com/about.

Assigning the WordPress Custom page templates

It is also possible to assign the custom templates manually to the particular pages and WordPress can also use it in the automatic form.

In the form of WordPress page template hierarchy, there will be a template file present in the theme folder.

So, just like you create a page-specific template for the WordPress hierarchy, this will ask you to provide a specific template file and then link it to whichever page you want to use it for.

It can be done in two different ways from which you will be familiar with. Some of the details are given as follows:

Assign custom page templates from the WordPress editor

In the WordPress editor, you will find an option field called the ‘Page Attributes’ which has a drop-down menu under it named as ‘Template’.

After clicking on it, it will give you a list of different available page templates on your WordPress theme website. Choose the one you like, save it; update it when you are done.

Setting a custom template through quick edit

• Go to ‘All Pages’ section and hover over any of the item mentioned in the list there.
• A menu will become visible to you that include the ‘Quick Edit’ item.
• Click on it for editing the page setting directly from there.
• You will see the similar drop-down menu there for choosing a different page template.
• Pick the one you like and edit it.

How to use WordPress custom page template?

The WordPress page templates can be employed for many different purposes and can be customized easily into anything.

It only requires a good imagination and well-versed coding.

Some of the major uses are given below:

It can be used as Full-width page template.

Firstly, in this case, the sidebar is removed by deleting it through this command,

<? php get_sidebar (); ?>

Then some specific changes are done in the CSS coding as shown below,

.site-content {
  Float: left;
  Width: 65 %;
}

The width attribute limits the website’s element which holds our content to 65% of the available space.

If we just change the size to 100%, this will affect all other pages on our website as well, which is not the exact thing we want.

So, for this purpose, the div‘s class in the WordPress custom page template would be changed to class="site-content-fullwidth".

It would look something like this as shown below:

It can add the 404 pages with the widget bars

The 404 error page is that particular page which comes up when the person lands on some page on a website that does not exist. Maybe it is a faulty link or a typo error.

It is really important to add these pages on your website. It shows you responsibe towards the audience.

It is difficult to code a page from scratch if you are not much well-versed in your coding abilities then it is much better to add some widgets to your templates. It can be changed flexibly with the help of drag and drop.

It would be done with the help of 404.php file. It would pop-up on to your website when it is needed.

After uploading the WordPress web pages template to the website, then move forward towards the making of widget area.

It facilitates by adding page template for displaying the custom post types

The Custom post types are one of the effective techniques to introduce content that has its own set of data points, design, and other similar customizations.

Firstly, create a custom post type- CPT which can be easily done through a plug-in or manually. A plug-in named as ‘Types’ can be used for creating custom post types and custom fields.

It would be installed and activated for further customization on your WordPress web pages.

After adding a few items in the ‘portfolio’ section, the content would be shown underneath it.

There is only one way to master the WordPress theme in customizing websites that are learning to use the page templates. They can make customizing your website very easy to sue and allow you to assign the unique functionality and design.