Do I need a custom page template?

  • My site is here. I want it to be a plain static website, with one nav link to a blog.

    It is a twenty-eleven child theme. I have created the static pages by editing the CSS and choosing the single-column theme option.

    My problem is that I want the blog to have two columns, a footer, widgets, and so on. I have managed to get all the pages to look just how I want, but the appearance I’ve succeeded with for the pages is NOT what I want for the blog.

    I’m still very new at this and I don’t understand the template system well. Now that I have my pages looking the way I want, how can I give my blog all the normal blog functionality without wrecking my page appearance?

    Any help will be much appreciated.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • Your main posts page will use the index.php template file (in the parent theme if no such file exists in the child), so it will be unaffected by your custom page templates.

    I want the blog to have two columns,

    the easiest way is possibly to go for one of the ‘content with sidebar’ layout options;
    static pages and single posts do not have a sidebar by default, and stretching them to full width is pretty with css.

    on the other hand, forcing a sidebar onto index.php in a ‘one-column’ layout would be a challenge…

    Thread Starter BetsyS

    (@betsys)

    Thank you for the replies.

    In order to make sure I know what you mean:
    esmi, since my main posts page (which is my blog) uses the index.php template, and will be unaffected by my custom page templates, then it sounds like what I need to do is create custom page templates for my static pages.

    Here are my followup questions:
    1) Can I create custom templates based on my current static pages, which are themselves based on my theme’s one-column layout? And
    2) having done that, will I be able to successfully switch my theme option to two-column and add things like footers and widgets, for the purpose of having my post page look like a regular blog, without having any of those changes appear on my static pages?

    And alchymyth: If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that I should choose the two-column option that 2011 theme offers? and then adjust my static page CSS to over-ride the two-column spacing so that it goes to the full width? My questions about this are:

    1) Which part of the static page CSS do I re-write? What should the new version say, in order to give me the full-width page?
    2) How do I keep widgets, footer, etc which I add to my posts page from showing up on the static pages?

    My final general question is: is it better to just do a whole second installation of WordPress for my blog and just set it up from scratch, and link to it from my website?

    1) Which part of the static page CSS do I re-write? What should the new version say, in order to give me the full-width page?

    you would need to post a link to your site after you have done the layout changes.

    2) How do I keep widgets, footer, etc which I add to my posts page from showing up on the static pages?

    staitc pages don’t have sidebars, so widgets won’t be a problem; about footer – this won’t be any different than it is now.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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