custom template – Error: TPL-01

[creatorofstuff]

Hi – I am trying to create a custom template. I make a page, and try saving it as a custom template. When I give a name, it comes back with “Error: TPL-01”. What am I doing wrong? Thanks!

[Swift Ideas – Ed]

Hi there,

This error would show for an incomplete name or template. Do you have assets within the page? What name are you trying to use?

– Ed

[creatorofstuff]

Thank you. That helps! – I guess I wasn’t adding the correct asset, although I thought I had tried adding some assets to the content without success. Maybe not.

What I want to do is create a page that has the WooCommerce sidebar but is otherwise an “empty slate”. I’m using a plugin called Taxonomies Filter. When it returns the search results, by default, it is using a template called search.php. There is a place to put in a custom template name for the plugin, which is what I want to do. Currently, the default search.php template has the sidebar that contains posts (I think it’s the default “sidebar 1”.) but I want it to look like the products page so a person can use the filter again if it doesn’t deliver the desired results.

Anyway, based on your answer I am now able to get a template to save (I’ve named it search_results), but for some reason the plugin is not using it, even though I set the template to be the one I just created. Maybe I need to contact the plugin author. (?)

[Melanie – SUPPORT]

Hi,

can you by any chance contact the plugin developers about this problem?
There is a massive amount of plugins out there on the market. Each and every one is created by a different developer who uses their own techniques and code.
Because of this, we cannot guarantee that everyone of them will work with our theme. When an issue arises, we will certainly try to do what we can to fix it though. The best thing to do first is to report the issue to the plugin developer because they know their own code better than we do. Let us know what the plugin developer reports back and we will see what can be done!

Thanks and all the best!

[creatorofstuff]

Hi. Yes, I have contacted the developer of the plugin and it seems that my problem is my interpretation of the definition of a template. Regarding the template that I created in your page maker, he says this:

“… that’s not a template file, it saves only the elements from within that page, in case you want to reuse them. Also, if a template file would have been created, you would see it inside the “Page Attributes” menu, on the right side, as an option to choose from existing ones.”

So knowing this, am I understanding correctly that there is not a simple way to create a true custom template (one that appears in the page attributes menu) except with some coding (which I don’t think I’m equipped to do)?

Thanks so much!

[Melanie – SUPPORT]

Exactly, you would need to know your way around html and php in order to create a custom page template
http://codex.wordpress.org/Page_Templates

Cheers!

[frstrat]

@ Melanie

How do i create a custom template when the template selection option isn’t given in the pages widget in the sidebar?

[Melanie – SUPPORT]

Hi,

to create a page template you need a code editor to modify php files, you cannot create a page template as per http://codex.wordpress.org/Page_Templates from within the editor of your wordpress installation.

If you already created one, make sure that the page template section is activated upon clicking the screen options panel in the upper right corner of your edit page page and clicking the checkbox to enable it.

Cheers