WordPress is based on the use of templates for specific purposes. There are templates for different types of situations, like a blog posting, a regular page, a 404 error or to display blog postings for a certain category. The default templates are “single.php”, “page.php”, “search.php”, “author.php”, “404.php”, “category.php”, “archive.php” and “index.php”. There is a hierarchy to all these template pages which follow an order depending on what the visitor wants to see.
Whenever you are in the WordPress admin and you’re creating or editing a page or blog post, you will see what template is currently being used:
The “Default” will either use the “single.php” template page for posts or will use “page.php” for pages (WordPress 3.0+). You can add your own template relatively easy, below are the steps to creating a custom template.
- Create a template file
- Customize your template file
- Apply your template to the desired page