Flexible and Powerful Custom Page Layouts

In this Feature of the Week post I’m going to take a look at part of the functionality in Catalyst that makes it such a powerful choice for a WordPress Theme.

One of the over-riding philosophies in Catalyst Theme is flexibility.

Catalyst Theme, and the Dynamik Child Theme bundled with it, pretty much cater for most design requirements that you might wish to implement in a WordPress site.

One major part of that flexibility that Catalyst provides is the ability to implement multiple Custom Page Layouts in the same site.

Catalyst Theme allows you to define an unlimited number of Custom Page Layouts, each of which is given its own name when you create it.

There are then three main design criteria that can be applied to each and every individual Custom Page Layout.

Firstly, each layout can have its own Sidebar arrangement assigned to it. The Sidebar arrangement for a Custom Layout is defined when the Layout is created and can be changed at any time afterwards.

Adding Custom Page Layouts and Defining Sidebars

Here we can see a number of layouts that have been created in the Catalyst Theme > Advanced Options > Custom Layouts section with the Sidebar choice selected from the drop down on the right hand side of each layout.

It is quite possible to give different Custom Page Layouts the same Sidebar arrangement – Double Right Sidebar for instance – which can then be taken advantage of with the next design criteria to be applied to each of the layouts.

In the Dynamik Widths options, the widths for the Content and Sidebar areas of each individual Custom Page Layout can be specified.

So, if you have two layouts, one called “page_layout_1” and the other “page_layout_2”, that both have a Double Right Sidebar arrangement, each of the areas can have totally different widths and the overall width of each page layout can also be different as a result.

Here we can see the widths involved for the various areas of each of the page layouts shown previously.

Defining Widths for Each Custom Page Layout

As we can see from the above image, the various component widths of each of the three layouts highlighted, all of which have the same Double Right Sidebar layout, are different in every case.

The third design criteria that can be individually applied to each Custom Page Layout is that of Widgets.

The Sidebar areas for each Page Layout are specific to that layout.

As a Sidebar is a widgetized area, this means that the Sidebars for each layout appear as separate entities in the WordPress Widgets menu as shown below.

Sidebar Widget Areas for each Custom Page Layout

Widgets for each Sidebar area can now be dragged into each Sidebar area as desired.

The use of unique Widget Areas for individual Page Layouts can be extended further using Custom Widget Areas and Custom Hook Boxes which can be applied to one, several, or every Custom Page layout on an individual basis.

Now that we have our Custom Page Layouts, each with their individual Sidebar arrangements, and each of those with individually defined widths and widgets, we can assign any Page or Post to them on an individual basis as we wish using the Layout option in the Catalyst Post/Page Options as shown below.

Assigning a Custom Page Layout to a Page

This provides a HUGE degree of flexibility and power for us in designing our sites and allows us to create individual areas of the site to suit individual requirements.

As you can probably imagine, the flexibility and power provided by Catalyst Theme with regard to this functionality doesn’t stop at the above and I’ll look at some additional options that the Custom Page Layout functionality provides us with in a later Feature of the Week post.

Have fun.

David.

David Pritchard is the author of the Catalyst Theme Cheat Sheet – the 250+ page guide that helps users make the most of Catalyst Theme. Licenced Catalyst Theme users can get their FREE copy in the downloads section of the Catalyst Theme forum. David also has a site that covers Catalyst Theme, WordPress, SEO, internet marketing techniques and other topics at http://www.FastStepInternetMarketing.com