I just finished writing a newsletter about WordPress page templates and how businesses could leverage them to create better content. In the email, I brainstorm about a few templates I think themes should be taking advantage of.
This is my list of page templates to keep an eye out for in a new theme or possibly some worth adding to your current one.
Useful WordPress Page Templates
Full Width Page Template
This is probably the most widely used page template. It’s popular for landing pages on business sites and sometimes just an easy way to make extra space for a large graphic.
Site Map Page Template
A sitemap could be generated by a plugin but themes can often display them much more elegantly.
Gallery Page Template
A gallery page template could pull all images attached to a post and display them in an organized manner with some flashy effect. Also keep the new post formats and gallery shortcode in mind when creating galleries on the fly.
(Example)
List Subpages/ChildPages Template
This page template display links of its subpages. Comes in handy more than you would think. This makes it easy to generate press release and news archives without using posts.
(Code)
Team/Author Page Template
A team/author page template could display a list of employees at your company or authors of your blog by pulling from registered WordPress users or a custom post type.
Social Stream Page Template
Why not have a page template that lays out all of your social streams in an organized manner.
(Example)
Logged In Page Template
A logged in page template is an easy way to restrict access to only logged in subscribers of your site.
Widgetized Content Page Template
This template would turn your main content area into a sidebar so you could load widgets where your content usually is.
(Code)
Portfolio Page Template
This could display images similar to the gallery page template or it could have its own custom post type to pull from.
(Example)
Redirect Page Template
This is a simple page template I’ve seen in a few popular premium themes. It’s basically an easy way to do a 301 redirect on your website without using plugins.
(Code)
Contact Page Template
Some themes go as far as integrating custom form builders. You should at least look for good contact page templates. It’s also just an easy way to insert contact forms into pages.
Blog Page Template
A blog page templates displays your blog posts. Some themes will give you a few different display options.
Custom RSS Page Template
This page template makes it easy to display an RSS feed on any page.
(Code)
Redirect to Child
Sometime you might have several subpages grouped together but no need for the parent page that holds them. This page template automatically redirects to the first child page.
(Code)
This is just the tip of the iceberg. You could have custom page templates for videos, testimonials, services pages and more.
Let me know of any other page template ideas I should add to the list and maybe any themes you think are using WordPress page templates in cool ways.
19 replies on “14 WordPress Page Templates To Make Life Easier”
Thank you so much. This helps me beyond belief. Doing a huge project for free and I feel so over my head with it. Again thanks for your site!
[…] templates in cool ways. 1saves Save Did you enjoy this post? Please share your thoughts in the commentsbelow or subscribe to the RSS feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed […]
Thanks for this list! Creating a new theme for my website, this will surely come handy.
Thanks so much for this helpful information.
We have become solely crazy about a great deal! Appealing, gorgeous, wonderful!!
Fairly quickly wonderful. Just simply tremendous. ~~
[…] checks for custom post typesStereoline – 30 in 1 Magazine ThemeWordPress Platform Pro Review14 WordPress Page Templates To Make Life EasierjQuery(document).ready(function($){ if (navigator.platform == "iPad") return; […]
nice collections……http://www.wikicyber.in/
Here is one more page template to add to the list:
http://wp.tutsplus.com/tutorials/theme-development/create-a-quicksand-portfolio-with-wordpress/
and tutorial on how to create page templates:
http://wp.tutsplus.com/tutorials/creating-custom-page-templates/
You need to be a part of a contest for one of the best sites online. I am going to highly recommend this blog!
hi,
very impressive ! tnq.
This is a wonderful collection! Exactly what I was looking for.
Thanks! Took awhile to put together so I’m glad people are finding it useful.
Thanks for the hard work…gold mine.
I have a music/studio site. Many times I would like to link a client to a page with no navigation and no header where I can post a trial clip of their song and they can go and listen and not be inundated with the site’s nav and widget collection.
Hey thank you for the information! also nice blog!
Hi Jon,
Interesting post and informative post, I don’t suppose you could post the code for the gallery you created?
Ant
Wow.thanks alot this is really great. It helps me a lot. This is very useful. WordPress theme also counts in to make it more creative.
Great resource. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you, Jon. This is quite helpful.