Create Custom template for Wordpress

 Dhananjay Karn  Eval Technologies mentioned.

By default wordpress displays its posts on home page but this is not always desirable. What if you want to display a static page on home page and display your posts on separate page aswww.yourdomain.com/blog/ , 

WordPress Page Templates are the answer

WordPress provides a clever way to do this called Custom Page Templates.When building out a custom “Blog” section for your WordPress site, sometimes it’s easiest to create a custom page template that you can customize that allows you to set the page location (such as http://yourdomain.com/blog), as well as your very own title and description that are displayed at the top of the blog section.

Follow the 6steps and you will have a separate blog template:

Step 1. Copy index.php to blog_template.php

Create a new php file  blog_template.php and copy the contents from index.php. This is to maintain the current theme structure of your wordpress.

Step 2. Create Page Template

Now convert the blog_template.php in to a template. You can do it by copying the following code at the top of your blog_template.php .

/*
Template Name: Blog_Template
*/

3. Use Custom Query for Posts

Now we need to get the posts using query .  Place the following code below get_header() .

<?php query_posts(‘post_type=post&post_status=publish&posts_per_page=10&paged=’. get_query_var(‘paged’)); ?>

the above code will fetch 10 posts in a page with pagination.

4. Add  Pagination

Place the pagination code after the wordpress query loopas :

<div class=”navigation”>
<span class=”newer”><?php previous_posts_link(__(‘« Newer’,'example’)) ?></span> <span class=”older”><?php next_posts_link(__(‘Older »’,'example’)) ?></span>
</div>

5. Reset the Query

Once you’ve output all your posts and navigation, you can usewp_reset_query() to reset the query_posts() results that you created earlier. In lamens terms, you’ve now reset the query to what it was before you calledquery_posts()

6. Create a page and apply the template:

Now create a new page with title Blog

Now the important part apply the template we created to new blog page.

If you feel above 6 steps are complex to go with by any means at the end of the 5th step, Dont worry  your  blog_template.php  is ready to go as below  . You can directly copy the code below for blog_template.php.

<?php get_header(); ?>

<div id=”content”>

<?php query_posts(‘post_type=post&post_status=publish&posts_per_page=10&paged=’. get_query_var(‘paged’)); ?>

<?php if( have_posts() ): ?>

<?php while( have_posts() ): the_post(); ?>

<div id=”post-<?php get_the_ID(); ?>” <?php post_class(); ?>>

<a href=”<?php the_permalink(); ?>”><?php the_post_thumbnail( array(200,220) ); ?></a>

<h2><a href=”<?php the_permalink(); ?>”><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>

<span class=”meta”><?php author_profile_avatar_link(48); ?> <strong><?php the_time(‘F jS, Y’); ?></strong> / <strong><?php the_author_link(); ?></strong> / <span class=”comments”><?php comments_popup_link(__(’0 comments’,'example’),__(’1 comment’,'example’),__(‘% comments’,'example’)); ?></span></span>

<?php the_excerpt(__(‘Continue reading »’,'example’)); ?>

</div>

<?php endwhile; ?>

<div class=”navigation”>
<span class=”newer”><?php previous_posts_link(__(‘« Newer’,'example’)) ?></span> <span class=”older”><?php next_posts_link(__(‘Older »’,'example’)) ?></span>
</div>

<?php else: ?>

<div id=”post-404″ class=”noposts”>

<p><?php _e(‘None found.’,'example’); ?></p>

</div>

<?php endif; wp_reset_query(); ?>

</div>

<?php get_footer() ?>