Maybe I am a little bit lost here, but I am just trying to create a website with multiple pages to fill with content.
I know that my header will be the same for every site using the conditions, but I don’t get how I can create a “template” or something for single pages, so every of my pages looks the same (background, inner container and so on). Of course I want to fill my single pages with different content.
The problem I see coming is, that using a template to create each of these sides will result in the need of changing every single page that is using this template if I want to change the appearance of my site globally (or the template). I could fill in the overworked template of course, but that would result in overwritten content which I would have to replace manually again.
I can’t seem to find an option to create a template that will be used globally, but allows certain part like images or text to be specifically for one page only.
I have a hard time putting my problem in words, I hope you understand what I am trying to accomplish.
Thanks for your help.
Hi, @doener. Welcome to the forum and making your first post. I will try to help you, but it is ‘fairly complicated’ if you have no experience.
A template alone will not do what you need. You also need custom fields. The plugins to create custom fields that are supported are here: Dynamic Data – Bricks Academy
I will hopefully give you a use case that will help you that I have the right meaning.
I am making location pages for my website services.
Page 1. Website Design London
Page 2. Website Design New York
Page 3. Website Design Paris
A lot of information might be the same on all the pages to create a template. And you that for all the pages to save from having to recreate them each time.
However, I need to change just certain elements example, the location name in the title or if I have added anywhere elsewhere in the template page to change to the new location. The same is images; if I have used an image of big ben for London, it will look stupid when using the template for New York.
And that is why we use custom fields. A custom field basically creates a box to change the information on parts that need changing. So you add the custom field in the template. And then, when you create your pages, you can use this location or image for this page. I hope this makes sense.
Here is a good video that got me started on my understanding of how to use custom fields. It is for Elementor, but the process is the same and not too different using Bricks.
From my experience it is pretty easy to build templates for the header, footer and single posts, but for pages it’s some kind of different. There is a pretty long (and maybe confusing) thread about this topic.
Long story short: at this time, you are not able to create a “global” page template that shows maybe a header with the post title, after that a “bricks inner content” (where you can change the content within bricks itself) and at the bottom a footer with e.g. related pages. This “bricks inner content feature” will be available in the future.
What you can do right now: build a page template and use the “post content” element, that shows everything you have written in Gutenberg (like you will do it probably for single posts) or create a “section template” that contains your single page layout and insert it in every page you create (keep in mind that you cannot change it globally) and fill in your content within the bricks builder.
I will look into it.
But in general it seems very unintuitive for me that you cant just build a theme and fill the sites with the contents you desire. I think it’s a fairly common thing that sites use the same layout for every page and I can’t get it in my head that there is no way just to create a layout (for me that means just a background image and the size of the inner container above the background), use it globally so that it changes on every site and just fill a certain part of the site with content. Thats the concept of like every single drag&drop website builder I have used in my life.
Thank you timmse, that seems to answer my question best. It’s just not implemented yet. I thought this was one of the simplest and basic things for a page builder, but I think everybody has different needs, especially with the latest trend to one-page sites.
I think for now I will just do it as you say, create blog posts that will contain the content I want to fill in and just hide things like author, date etc.
I’m not an absolute beginner in wordpress but I have the feeling that bricks definitely has a much steeper learning curve than other themes in combination with a page builder. Does anyone share this impression?
It still confuses me that this isn’t possible since day one (like global sections for example)… but at least it is coming
Learning curve: Some things seem to be “different” in bricks, but it’s not even half a year old… and there are still some things to do, that should actually be taken for granted but there are also features, that are totally awesome… but the documentation (Bricks Academy) is far from complete. This confuses me also from time to time, although I’ve been working with bricks for a while.
At this moment (from my point of view), it is not possible to build every, but many sites with bricks (sometimes extremely fast, depending on the requirements, the layout and bugs slowing you down).
Can’t you just use Theme Styles for this?
Lets you set a background ( colour, image, video options ) that you can change at any time without altering the page content.
Lots of other settings to configure too.
You can create multiple Theme Styles and use conditions to assign them to parts of your site.
sure you can use theme styles to style certain elements, but at least you still need some kind of „template“ or layout where the styles will be applied to.
So I think it‘s personal preference to style the template directly or use theme styles (which have less options than the elements themselves in some cases).
No worries @doener. Ah, my bad for misunderstanding; I thought you asked how to use a template and customize the template slightly for each page. This is the same functionality as other website builders.
But yes, if you wanted the template to remain the same and add a content box that changes by pulling in a new post you create into the content box, then as @timmse mentioned, you can only add this by creating a post/content via Gutenberg and not by Bricks at the moment. I believe this is being addressed in the next 1 or 2 releases
Create a theme style. Use it to define background colour, container size. ( Other stuff too of course )
Using Conditions I set it to entire website.
Now whenever I create a new page or a new Template ( Single Post is all I normally use ), I start with those Theme styled settings and can add my content over the top.
I agree that if you want to have a specific layout then you’d need maybe a template of a section.
But the above lets me set a global page size ( container size ) with a global background colour or image. If I need to change the image, just change it in Theme Style and its done for the whole site.
Maybe a bit simplistic but that’s all I need for making my sites pages look similar.
Sorry @alanj , I didn’t get it right away… you’re right of course: setting global theme styles like a container width, background color, fonts and font sizes, colors etc. should be the first thing on the list to ensure a consistent look throughout the whole site.
So it’s very good that you threw the topic in the room and maybe that’s exactly what @doener actually wanted to know
@doener You‘ll find the Theme Styles at the gearwheel on the upper left in the builder.
Thanks for the tip alanj. I will look into it, maybe it even is enough for my site. But I think I will have to wait since the feature I am missing is implemented.
So this seemed to help me at least a bit. Does somebody know if I can set a “inner background” (just plain white colour) in these theme style settings? I just seem to be able to set the size of the root container.
FYI the Theme Styles are responsive! So you can set different colours etc for mobile, under the same theme name.
Now I am wondering if it could be possible to set a theme style dynamically. Maybe have a light theme and a dark theme that could be set by the users local time, perhaps? Just an idea.
