In this lesson, you will learn everything about page templates. From how a page is structured and what types of page templates exist to how you can change the template of your page.

Templates

In our CMS, each theme has different types of page layouts. In our CMS, we call these templates. This is to ensure that the page layout of the homepage can be different from that of a subpage where you display the school schedule, for example.

Types of templates

Essentially, there are two types of pages:

1. Pages suitable for a homepage, called welcome page in our CMS.
2. Pages suitable for displaying content, called content page in our CMS.

Such a page is built using various placeholders, but more on that later in the placeholders section. First, let's explain the two different templates below.

Welcome page

The welcome page is designed as the starting page where your visitor lands when they go to www.schoolname.com. This page is created to give the visitor a clear picture of your school with large images and short pieces of text to immediately capture the attention of your website visitor.

Content page

The content page is created for all your other pages on the website. These pages are structured to accommodate a lot of textual information. Most themes often have only one type of content page, but newer themes have multiple options for the layout of the content page. 

Placeholders

Placeholders determine where content appears on the page. It's best explained with an example. Below, you see a page called "identity." On the right side of the page, in the gray box (also called the structure), you see various placeholders like "Main," "Sidebar," etc. As you can see, there is text in "Main." The "Main" placeholder ensures that all content you place here ends up in this location. In these placeholders, you can add anything from videos to text. In the next lesson, we'll learn how to add content to these placeholders.

Static placeholders

Finally, you'll notice a pin icon next to some placeholder names, such as icons and logo. These placeholders are static, meaning that whatever you add here will appear on every page of your website. To see what's in these placeholders, you need to click on the name of the placeholder first before it becomes visible.

Image: Placeholder structure

Changing the template

Now that you know everything about templates, we'll explain below how to change them.

First, go to the page for which you want to change the layout. Do this just as you would navigate a website you visit normally, using the menu bar.

Next, go to the "Gear icon" in the top toolbar, this option is between Theme and Language. 

A menu will now appear, where you then go to Templates (the fifth item on the list). Choose the template you want from the list you see now.