As you probably know, WordPress keeps all your content in a database, and it uses themes to determine how to display that content. That's why when you change your WordPress theme you can get an entirely different looking blog with exactly the same content – it's because content and presentation are kept separate.

Each WordPress theme is kept in it's own folder which contains specific files for displaying the various pages of your blog. For example, if there is a file called "single.php" in your theme folder it will be used to display any single post on your blog. By changing "single.php" you can alter how single posts are displayed.

Because we're going to be creating a custom page template, we'll be looking for a file called "page.php" in your theme folder. This is the file which determines how individual pages are displayed. The first thing we want to do is make a copy of it and name it something like "template_page.php" so we can identify it later. By the way, if your theme doesn't have a file called "page.php" you can just make a copy of the "index.php" file instead.

To make this page into a template which WordPress recognizes (and that you'll be able to use), we need to add the following code right at the top of the file;

<?php
/*
Template Name: My Template
*/
?>

The text after "Template Name" can be anything you like, but bear in mind it will appear in the "Page Template" drop down box, so be sure to give your template a meaningful name. Once you've copied this file to your theme folder it will be available to WordPress.

Well, believe it or not, you have just created a page template. Quick, let's see if it works… Go to your blog admin section and create a new page, but before you publish it, scroll down and look for a "Page Template" section with a drop-down box. Click it and you should see your template listed in there – it's name will be the same text you put after the "Template Name" at the top of the file. Select your template name and publish the page. Congratulations!

Hmmm… it probably doesn't look any different. Well, that's because we didn't actually change anything in the file, apart from making it into a template, so it will display content in exactly the same way as the file we copied. Let's make some changes and see what happens…

In your new template file, you've probably got a line of code that looks something like this;

<h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>

That basically tells WordPress to display the Title of the page. Add an extra line right after it that contains this;

<?php echo '<p>This page was produced by my excellent page template!</p>'; ?>

Browse to the page which uses your page template, and you should see the text "This page was produced by my excellent page template!" right after your title.

That's pretty much how page templates in WordPress work. I find them perfect for such things as contact pages and sitemaps ..etc, but you can put just about anything you like in your template and it will be displayed by WordPress. Your imagination really is the limit.

As an example I've created a page template which aims to help you find a ClickBank winner by showing items from the ClickBank marketplace that have a minimum commission and gravity. I used exactly the same principle as I've outlined in this post. Let me know how you get on…

Here's one of the themes I use – beachbum – which is what I want to be when I grow up…

This theme is designed to be used for a review or single affiliate product type site. To that end, it's got an extra sidebar on the left which is ideally suited to your recommended product. The theme supports widgets so the easiest way to include a review or recommendation is to add a text widget to sidebar2.

One of my pet hates is having to edit theme files once they're up on the server, so what I started to do was include a Theme Options page whenever I made a new WordPress theme. This allowed me to add options to the theme which I could change easily, without editing any of the theme files.

This theme has options too. When you're in your admin pages and you choose this theme, you'll see an extra menu appear alongside the "Theme Editor" menu – Theme Options. Click on that to see what you can configure for this particular theme.

Theme options

At the moment, these are the things you can mess with;

1. Main keyword phrase
2. Color scheme
3. Font family
4. Whether to show the header text
5. Which pages to appear in the menu bar

Most of them are probably obvious except perhaps the "main keyword phrase" which I'll explain now.

Main keyword phrase

As I mentioned, this theme is designed to be used with a particular niche, which often means a particular keyword phrase. If you type your main keyword phrase into this box, it will be used instead of your blog title in the meta title tag and within an H1 tag at the top of every page, along with the post or page title. Basically, it's a more keyword focused alternative to your blog title. You can leave it blank and your blog title will be used in the normal way.

Color scheme

The theme comes with 12 color schemes, which saves me trying to find a separate theme for each niche – I can usually find a color that fits.

Font family

It also comes with a choice of 6 font families. I admit I don't use this, but I know we all have our own favorite fonts so I threw it in to make it that bit more useful.

Show header text

Quite often I have a theme header graphic that already has text on it, so I wanted the option to turn off the blog title and description that normally appear in the header. The "show header text" option allows me to do that easily.

Pages for menu bar

Lastly, you can specify the WordPress page IDs of those pages you want to appear in the main menu bar, under the header. This is handy for linking to a review page ..etc.

These are the other additional options and features which aren't available as a setting in the Theme Options page.

Header image

To change the header image, just overwrite the existing one at wp-themes/beachbum/img/header.jpg with your own. It should be 750px by 150px, but it will get trimmed if it's any bigger than that.

Custom CSS

If you want to add any custom CSS code, all you need to do is create a CSS file called "custom.css" and drop it into the theme folder. It will automatically get picked up and applied.

HTML Sitemap

Oh yes, I almost forgot, it's got a built-in HTML sitemap template. Using this is as easy as assigning the "Sitemap" template to a page. Create a new page in the admin section, scroll down until you see a section for specifying the Page Template, and choose "Sitemap" from the drop-down list and save it. Hey presto – you have a sitemap page for your site with all pages, posts, categories, and feeds in a lovely list.

Ok, here is the download link. Don't hesitate to come back here and ask questions, make suggestions, or let me know about bugs.