Advanced Templates: Additional Weblog Pages

Creating New Index Templates

An index template is an extra page that is added to your weblog. Index templates are set up using an advanced template set in TypePad.

An advanced template set is customized using HTML and TypePad template tags and should be used only if you are comfortable with editing and adding code directly in templates.

See What are Advanced Template Sets? for more about advanced templates.

Convert to an advanced template set

If you do not have an advanced template set already, start with Creating an Advanced Template Set to work with.

After converting a basic template set to an advanced set, use the Select a different template set for your weblog drop-down menu on the Design tab for the weblog to assign the advanced template as the active template for the weblog. Click Use this Template Set.

createindex1

Add a new template to the set

After the advanced set has been selected for the weblog, the List Templates in this set link is shown on the Design tab for the weblog in the Currently Selected Template Set area instead of the Layout, Content, Order, Style, and Basics links that are shown with a basic template set. Click List Templates in this set.

createindex2

Next, on the Advanced Template Set page, the different templates in the set are listed. Above the template listing area is the Create new index template link. Click Create new index template.

Fill in the template information

On the Create New Template page, fill in the text areas with the information for the index template. Every template has a name, an output file, and a body.

The Template Name is a meaningful name for you to remember which template it is. The Output File is the name of the file that will be created. The output file name is used in the URL for the page, as http://example.typepad.com/weblog/mypage.html

The Publish this template automatically when publishing index templates check box sets whether or not to publish this template when the other index pages are published. Leave this box checked to automatically update the page, uncheck it if you would like to publish this template manually.

The Template Body is where the code for the template goes. You can add anything you would like here.

If you would like the template to match your other pages, an easy way to do this is to copy the entire Template Body from the Main Index Template in the same set and paste it into this new template. Then remove the part starting with the <MTEntries> tag and ending with the </MTEntries> tag.

That will remove the content for this template so you can fill in your custom content instead, keeping the same style and layout as the other pages. For example, you could replace the MTEntries section with this for the content:

<h3>A Nice Title</h3>
<p>This is my new page!</p>

Press the Save button to save the template.

Publish and view the new page

After saving the template, a message will appear at the top of the page that says “Your template changes have been saved.”

Press the Publish button to open the publishing popup window. This single index template is automatically selected for publishing. Click the Publish button to publish the page.

Next, the message appears that says the index template has been published. You have the option to view your site or view this page. Click View this page and the new page will open in a new browser window.

Copy the URL from the browser address bar to use for linking to your new page!

[top]