Hidden WordPress.com Themes’ Gem: Page Templates

I have been using both self-hosted WordPress and WordPress.com blog, but there’s one thing about WordPress that I just found out recently. It’s the Page Templates.

To put it simply, Page Templates is a custom-designed WordPress Page that might or might not be present inside the WordPress theme you are using. The presence of Page Templates depend solely on whether the theme’s designer include one or more Page Templates inside the theme or not.

By default, the template for our Page is a blank one. We write what we want, and it’s shown on our Page as expected. However, Page Templates are different. They will show different contents depending on the context of that Template. Some popular examples of Page Templates are Archive Page, Contact Page, and Links Page. As their name imply, Archive Page is the Page that displays the archives of your blog, Contact Page will display a contact form, and Links Page shows the links in your Blogroll. Note that it’s all up to the designer: he/she might include just one, or two, or more Page Templates inside one theme.

And, best of all, we don’t have to write their content manually. The theme designer will have the necessary coding and content needed for it. We simply need to create the Page, and boom, you have a fully working archive/contact/working/whatnot Page.

How do We Include a Page Template?

First of all, I’ll repeat it one more time that not every theme has a Page Template. In truth, most of the Themes I have checked contain no Page Template at all. To find whether your theme has a Page Template or not, and to include them (if any) inside your blog, do the following steps:

1. Enter the Dashboard, open Manage, then Page.
2. Now, to the right side of the page there should be different tabs such as Categories, Discussion, Post Password, and so on. If your theme has a Page Template, there should also be a tab there called, you guessed it, Page Template.
3. There should be a dropdown menu there, which will show you the list of available Page Template(s). Choose a Page Template, if any.
4. Give your Page a title. You do not have to write any content, simply leave the content input box empty. However, should you decide to add anything into the Page, it will be displayed on top on the Page Template’s content.
5. Publish the Page. Check the new Page to see what’s the content.

WordPress.com’s Themes Page Template Listings

I stumbled upon Page Template feature when I was looking around for ways to include an archive page into my WordPress.com blog. There are some hints where I should manually create the Page myself, listing Posts over Posts and added their permalinks one by one, which is not an ideal situation for me. That’s when I found out that the MistyLook theme has a feature for automatic archive page to creation, which is done via Page Templates.

So, just for the heck of it, I tried every single theme available to find out whether they have any Page Templates or not. Here is my finding:

1. Almost Spring: n/a
2. Ambiru: n/a
3. Andreas04: n/a
4. Andreas09: 2 Columns Archives List, 2 Columns Links List, 2 Columns Page, Links List, Archives List
5. Banana Smoothie: n/a
6. Benevolence: n/a
7. Blix: Archives, Contact Form
8. ChaoticSoul: Archives, Links
9. Connetions: n/a
10. Contempt: n/a
11. Cutline: Archives
12. Day Dream: Archives (Don’t Use Here)
13. Dusk: n/a
14. Emire: n/a
15. Fadtastic: n/a
16. Flora: Archives
17. Fjords04: n/a
18. Fleur de Lys: n/a
19. Flower Power: Contact
20. Fresh Bananas: n/a
21. Freshy: Link
22. Garland: n/a
23. Girl in Green: n/a
24. Greenery: n/a
25. Green Marinee: n/a
26. Hemingway: Archives, Links
27. Iceburgg: n/a
28. Jentri: n/a
29. K2-lite: n/a
30. Kubrick: Archives, Links
31. Light: n/a
32. MistyLook: Archives, Contact, Link
33. Neat!: n/a
34. Neo-Sapien: n/a
35. Ocadia: n/a
36. Ocean Mist: n/a
37. Pool: Archives, Links
38. PressRow: Archives, Links
39. Quentin: n/a
40. Redoable Lite: n/a → new update
41. Regulus: n/a
42. Rounded: n/a
43. Rubric: n/a
44. Sandbox: Archives Page, Links Page
45. Sapphire: Archives, Links
46. Shocking Blue Green: n/a
47. Silver is the New Black: n/a
48. Simpla: n/a
49. Solipsus: Archives
50. Sunburn: Archives, Links
51. Supposedly Clean: Archives, Links
52. Sweet Blossoms: Contact
53. Tarski: Archives, Links
54. Thirteen: n/a
55. Toni: n/a
56. Treba: n/a
57. Twenty-eight Thirteen: Archives, Default Template with Comments
58. Unsleepable: n/a
59. Vermilion Christmas: Archives, Links, Page 2
60. White as Milk: Archives, Links
61. WordPress Classic: n/a

Note that the Page Template names might be slightly different (although the have the same functionality). This, depends solely to what the designer decided to name them. Also, there might be differences in style for similar Page Template on different Themes (e.g: Links in Tarski might look different from Links in Sunburn).

Closing Words

In regards of Page Templates, it’s worth noting that not every theme is created equal. If you’re blogging with WordPress.com, refer to my list above to find what Themes contain the Templates that you want. If, say, you’re about to order a custom designed WordPress theme, see if they can design Page Templates for you as well.

There are tons of WordPress Themes out there. I have only listed those available in WordPress.com theme selection. Its unfortunate that, as far as I know, Page Templates feature isn’t one of the provided info at major Themes listing sites like themes.wordpress.net. As of now, we can only depend using the steps above to check the availability of Page Templates, or check at the Theme’s homepage in hope that the theme author mentioned them as well (some don’t!).