Can I Have More Than 1 Tempelate Per Website?

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

Dynamic pages of websites using CMS like wordpress are created in a special way in which the links of the pages are not physical links in contrast to the static HTML links. In dynamic pages, an instance of the tempelate is created and content is added. This is what I found when I searched about the difference between static and dynamic webpages.I need a website in which some pages must look different from other pages. The them may be same or not but the actual thing I need is to remove sidebars from certain pages and make them visible on cetain other pages.The goal of this is to make a static looking website with wordpress core installed on my server. Content management systems are very good because they save a lot of time by making addition of new content to the website very simple that is why I want to convert my static HTML website to a CMS based website.Please guide me if you have knowledge about it.

[mahesh2k 0]

Search for simple sidebars plugin on the google. This plugin sets different sidebars on your theme and it allows your page to be different per template or per page. This is very handy if you want different content per page. Theme makes same appearance on all pages, though content can be varied. By the way, why you said template should be different for static site per page ? this is wrong. different page template per page is bad design for users. I mean from the theme point of view. Keep the design consistent and change the content and the layout of new page using sidebar and other widgets. I'm not clear with most of your views so it'll take time to catch up with you. Reply based on my views and i'll see what i can do for you.

[imjjss 0]

For static front page--

You first create 2 page, let's call it "page1" and "page2" here. Then, go to WordPress Dashboard / Settings / Reading , choose "show front page as a static page", and choose "page1" as front page, chose "page 2" as post page.

Go to Appearance / Menu, remove the "page2" from the menu if you don't want it show up.

For removing the sidebar--

You need to create your own template. It sounds like a big job but it's actually very simple-- if all you need is to remove sidebar, follow these steps:

1. Go to your theme's folder, Make a copy of page.php, rename is to something else, let's say "my-page.php". Browse through the file, find this line:

<?php locate_template( array( 'sidebar.php' ), true ) ?>

Remove it;

2. On the top of this file, add this:

<?php/*Template Name: My whatever name Page*/?>

3. save the file.

4. When you create new page, on the right side of Dashbaord, you will see you can choose to use this "my whatever name page" template.

 

By the way, whatever you do, I'd suggest you do it in child theme. It's safer and very convinient. When Wordpress or your theme update, you won't lost your stuffs.

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

Search for simple sidebars plugin on the google. This plugin sets different sidebars on your theme and it allows your page to be different per template or per page. This is very handy if you want different content per page.
Theme makes same appearance on all pages, though content can be varied. By the way, why you said template should be different for static site per page ? this is wrong. different page template per page is bad design for users. I mean from the theme point of view. Keep the design consistent and change the content and the layout of new page using sidebar and other widgets.

I'm not clear with most of your views so it'll take time to catch up with you. Reply based on my views and i'll see what i can do for you.

No I did not mean that there should be a separate template for every separate page. I think I have failed once more in conveying my meaning to you. The point I needed to make was that I want some pages of my website to be different than other pages in terms of;
sidebars
menus for links
Page specific blocks etc..

The objective is to make the pages of my website that do not have much content to be ads free and in place of ads I can effectively add site navigation to these pages and hence I can increase the chance of lower level pages to be viewed more. So I want to make my home page, contact page, About page, and some other main pages to be completely free of ads and in the space where ads were present I want to add links to internal pages. The links to internal pages must be different on home page and other page. I mean that I want to display specific links to internal pages of my website on my home page and I do not want the same links to appear on other pages.
Similarly I want to change the navigation items of home page so that the navigation items of home page have less links (links only to important pages) than the links in the navigation of some other top level pages. I will explain this with an example. I have one top level page "gross anatomy" and another top level page "Microscopic anatomy". Now I want the navigation of page "gross anatomy" to contain links like Upper limb, Lower limb, thorax, head, neck etc. On the navigation of Microscopic anatomy page I want to display links Epithelium, Glands etc

So first I need to have different number and patterns of blocks ( I do not know the scope of the term block for wordpress but I am using it as an equivalent of "div" for html) on different pages and then I need different items in navigation and menus etc on different pages

[mahesh2k 0]

LOL. I get it but not completely so here is some for you to think of. You are trying to link your pages only to related ones. Now SEO wise this is worst mistake because you're not linking your important pages from main page menu or other areas. Why ? When search engine wants to index your content for new content where it should look ? on other pages by specifically looking at those or by looking at content pages ? How do you ping search engine ? by manually pinging all those topic pages ?See the mistake you're doing ?You're specifically making design complex when even simple design can solve navigational issue and can be better in terms of SEO and Readers. If i get your design -Home page | page 1 |page 2 | page 3In page 1 view -Home| Page1 |page1 topic | page 1topic 2|page 1 topic 3|This is what you're trying to accomplish and in this there are many SEO aspects are ignored for example linking to other pages and no updates on front page. Instead of this you can make things much easier. Create rollover menus and then when clicked on page 1 parent, it should generate child pages below it, not in drop down fashion but in horizontal menu fashion. This is better styling in my opinion because it preserves other links. You can see site telegraph.co.uk which is having such menu system. In between you have to create custom menu for every page and then feel it up for the child pages. It's going to be a lot complex and with you limited on HTML and CSS and php stuff expect it to take more time than usual static site building. Nonetheless you'll have good results with CMS.Hope that works out for you.

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

LOL. I get it but not completely so here is some for you to think of. You are trying to link your pages only to related ones. Now SEO wise this is worst mistake because you're not linking your important pages from main page menu or other areas. Why ? When search engine wants to index your content for new content where it should look ? on other pages by specifically looking at those or by looking at content pages ? How do you ping search engine ? by manually pinging all those topic pages ?See the mistake you're doing ?
You're specifically making design complex when even simple design can solve navigational issue and can be better in terms of SEO and Readers.

If i get your design -

Home page | page 1 |page 2 | page 3

In page 1 view -

Home| Page1 |
page1 topic | page 1topic 2|page 1 topic 3|

This is what you're trying to accomplish and in this there are many SEO aspects are ignored for example linking to other pages and no updates on front page.

Instead of this you can make things much easier. Create rollover menus and then when clicked on page 1 parent, it should generate child pages below it, not in drop down fashion but in horizontal menu fashion. This is better styling in my opinion because it preserves other links. You can see site telegraph.co.uk which is having such menu system.

In between you have to create custom menu for every page and then feel it up for the child pages. It's going to be a lot complex and with you limited on HTML and CSS and php stuff expect it to take more time than usual static site building. Nonetheless you'll have good results with CMS.Hope that works out for you.

Thankyou for your suggestion. I think you are right about the seo thing. I should have a link to my content pages from my index page so that search engines can index them quickly. If I can get to know how to make vertical drop down menus, I can get to it easily. Otherwise your comment is so strong that I will have to go for the drop down menu in which child is displayed vertically and grand child is displayed horizontally.
Please clearify one thing to me. If the drop down menus use JavaScript instead of css, will the links in them be treated effectively by search engines. Can they produce the same effect as static links in the content of the page.

[mahesh2k 0]

Links are treated the same be it in CSS or JS. there is no difference in that. You should definitely go for the menu that i have suggested to you i.e. parent horizontal click which leads to horizontal child menu. Links in static and dynamic produce the same result because once the page is loaded in browser unless you're fetching AJAX content it appears static to SE. So wordpress blogs 99% of the time are static when it comes to content, unless they have rapid content updating widget. So there is no difference for the value of links. Don't worry about google this much. Just concentrate on getting some traffic and link to your friends or get links from them. Concentrate on social media and linking and you'll find that search engines will come after you than you going after them.