How to Extend a Free Theme with Widgets

  • I’m diving back into WP after years away working on custom websites & apps.

    I installed a fairly barebones News theme because I liked the CSS and layout. But it only has 2 templates for home page and single page default and barebones widgets for each template.

    I want to have 4 more templates to assign to posts and pages with their own custom blocks and embedded widgets. Using the Gutenberg Block editor and Site Origin plugin I hoped to customize the theme’s 2 default templates and add the 4 more templates with their own custom widgets.

    I know there are multiple methods for manually stepping through different ways to make this happen. But then I started searching to see if there is a PLUGIN for WP itself, a Wizard approach — Adding, naming, saving my new templates. Then, step 2, calling up each template & adding the new widgets in their proper place, specifying a category or taxonomy or search result and updating that template. Then assigning those new template parts to the default index and default loading templates.

    In other words, in the interest of saving time & work, is there a Plugin that actually builds new Templates with new widgets embedded while in the WP Admin dashboard?

    I can not find any references to what I think would be a great plugin for this purpose. Yes, I know, I’m probably going to have to FTP in all of these separate files with the standard WP functions calling for such magic. But… just thought I’d make a gentle inquiry.

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  • Several powerful plugins can help you create custom templates and widgets for your WordPress site without having to write code or use FTP. Here are a few options you can consider:

    Elementor – Elementor is a popular page builder plugin that allows you to create custom templates and layouts for your WordPress site using a drag-and-drop interface. It also includes a variety of widgets and elements that you can use to add functionality to your site.

    Beaver Builder – Beaver Builder is another page builder plugin that lets you create custom templates and layouts using a drag-and-drop interface. It also includes a variety of modules and widgets that you can use to add extra features to your site.

    Themify Builder – Themify Builder is a page builder plugin that allows you to create custom templates and layouts for your WordPress site using a drag-and-drop interface. It includes a variety of modules and widgets that you can use to add extra features to your site.

    Using one of these plugins allows you to create custom templates and widgets for your WordPress site without having to write code or use FTP. These plugins provide a more intuitive and user-friendly approach to building custom templates, saving you time and effort while allowing you to create a unique and professional website.

    Is it a classical theme or a block theme. It makes a big differences. If it a classical theme you are going to have to do a lot of php programming if you want to add the other templates. You should have templates like archieve.php, page.php, 404.php, author.php, and so on. You can look at the wordpress hierarchy to get a complete list.

    If it a block based theme you will have a different setup. Instead of having an index.php you might have just a index.html in a folder named templates. You may or may not have the index.php. It is not required in version 6.0 or higher. If it a block based theme you can add all the templates in the block editor. You can do it without writing a single line of code. However, You will not be able to use widgets in a block theme. Widget area are created with php and block based themes are created with html.

    In a classical theme wordpress will fall back to the index.php file if a template hasn’t been created. You can use third party page builders to add templates as mentioned above. But once you do you are locked into using that page builder. There really no turning back.

    You can determine the type of theme from your dashboard. If it a Classical theme you will have the options for menus, widgets, and customizer. In the block theme all these options have been removed.

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