How to Create Custom WordPress Page Templates: A Step-by-Step Guide

Designing a website can be time-consuming. Even if you’re using a powerful WordPress theme or page builder, you may still spend hours building and editing your pages. Additionally, you might prefer to create a custom WordPress page template rather than use a generic and premade layout.

By creating WordPress templates, you can apply them to any page on your website. Therefore, you can also tweak your overall web design without manually updating every page.

Why Use Custom Page Templates?

Creating custom WordPress page templates gives you more freedom over your site’s appearance and helps you save time. In this post, we’ll look at why you might want to use custom page templates. We’ll then show you how to create them in WordPress. Let’s get started!

How to Create a Custom WordPress Page Template (2 Methods)

There are different ways you can create page templates in WordPress. You can either make one manually and upload it to your site or use a page-building plugin. Let’s take a closer look at each method!

1. Create a Page Template Manually

If you’re already familiar with how to create a WordPress theme, you might want to opt for the manual approach. This method requires a bit of coding knowledge and gives you a lot of flexibility over your custom template design. Here’s how to do it:

Create a Template File: Open your text editor and add the code <?php /* Template Name: CustomPage */ ?> to a new file. Save the file as something like “custompage.php”.
Upload the Template File to Your Site: Use an FTP client like FileZilla to upload the template file to your theme folder.
Customize Your Template File: Copy the existing page template from your theme, paste it into your custom page template file, and make any desired changes. Save your changes.

2. Create a Page Template With a Page Builder Plugin

If you lack coding knowledge, you can use a page-building plugin to create custom page templates. Two popular options are Elementor and Beaver Builder. Here’s how to create a template with Elementor:

Design Your Template: Install and activate Elementor, create a new template, and design your page using the drag-and-drop editor.
Apply the Template to Your Pages: Create a new page, open it in Elementor, and select your template from the library. Customize it as needed.

Conclusion

Learning how to create a WordPress page template can help you save time and effort. This process also enables you to easily adjust your site design to suit your needs better. In this post, we looked at two main ways to build WordPress custom page templates: creating a template file manually or using a page builder plugin. Both methods give you a lot of customization freedom, so choose the one that works best for you.

If you have any questions about creating a custom WordPress page template or creating a website, let us know in the comments section below!

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