WordPress Custom Page Template with No Sidebars

When building a WordPress Website for your business, one of the common things people want to do is to provide a home page that does not look like a blog. The Expand2Web SmallBiz theme automatically provides this for you – a page that tells visitors about your business and provides a clear call to action.

But what if you are using a different theme, or you are using the SmallBiz theme but want to completely customize the page? Or what if you want a home page that does not use the WordPress sidebars?

Well, WordPress custom page templates allow you to do this. I’ve shown how to do this in a previous post and video. But when you do this, all of your content for the page needs to be coded in HTML and included in the PHP file you create for your custom page template.

Wait, there is an even better way…

What if you want the customization that a custom page template provides, but you still want to use the WordPress visual editor to change the content on your page?

Here’s how you do it. You can create a custom page template, but inside the page template you need to include a few extra WordPress functions. This allows you create a page anywhere on your website and then edit the content of the page using the WordPress visual editor!

Here’s the code for the WordPress Custom Page Template

Here’s the code you use for the custom page template. Just copy this code and save it in a file called no-sidebar.php and put it in the /wp-content/themes/smallbiz directory.

<?php
/*
Template Name: No Sidebar
*/
?>

<?php get_header(); ?>

<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
<div style="width:850px !important;">

<?php the_content('
Read the rest of this page »</p>'); ?>
<?php edit_post_link('Edit this entry.', '<p>', '</p>'); ?>
<?php endwhile; else: ?>

<p><?php _e('Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.'); ?></p>
<?php endif; ?>
</div>
</div>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

Once you’ve created this file, you can go into WordPress and create your Page, and select No Sidebar as the page template. You will get a page that has the layout and look and feel of your website, without the sidebar. And best of all you can edit the content using the visual editor in WordPress!

I will be including this custom page template by default in the next version of my SmallBiz WordPress Theme coming out in the next couple of weeks.

Note: If you are using a theme other than the SmallBiz theme, this code can still work. You might have to remove the two <div> elements at the end, however.

Tagged as: custom page template, wordpress websites