Title: Structural/opinion question
Last modified: August 20, 2016

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# Structural/opinion question

 *  [jgclarke](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jgclarke/)
 * (@jgclarke)
 * [13 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/structuralopinion-question/)
 * Hi all- I have a question about high-level/structural theme organization I’d 
   love to get some feedback on. Here’s my issue:
 * * I have a site design from a client that has 4 unique page styles:
    1. A one-column right-hand layout
    2. A one-column left-hand layout
    3. A one-column full-width layout
    4. A two column left-hand layout
 * And, to make things more complex, there are 8 total pages: 1 page uses style #
   1, 5 pages use style #2, 1 page uses style #3, and 1 page uses style #4.
 * The way I see it, I have two main options for creating the structure to empower
   the relationship between these layouts and their pages:
    1. I can create a custom template (pagename.php) for each of the individual pages
       on the site, and then combine styles in the CSS file (so I don’t repeat myself)
       to
    2. I can inject the page slug into the body tag, so that I can write things like
       body.pagename [styles].
 * The downside I see to each of these options is that the HTML structures are based
   on variables that are user-surfaced; ie, if an end-user changes the page template
   or the page slug on the edit page, the front-end website will immediately break.
 * That being said, I don’t know of a way that I’d be able to define the structure*
   without* using a user-editable setting. So if that is my constraint, I think 
   my *best bet* is to use the page slug, since that requires less custom templates(
   and therefore less duplicated code).
 * Does anyone have any other ideas or feedback? Thank you in advance!

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

 *  Thread Starter [jgclarke](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jgclarke/)
 * (@jgclarke)
 * [13 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/structuralopinion-question/#post-2822403)
 * Quick update: I decided to use custom fields as the solution.
    - I think they’re more safe and reliable than either calling the slug or the
      template, since I think users are less likely to mess with them; even if they
      do, they can look at other page examples for context (though they can also
      do that with custom templates).
    - They’re more extensible, since I can use custom fields more flexibly than 
      having to tie specific layout styles to specific slugs or custom templates.
    - I added fallbacks for all 3 style instances (layout, background image, and
      logo) to ensure that if custom fields are removed or inserted incorrectly,
      at the least the site won’t completely break.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

The topic ‘Structural/opinion question’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [structure](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/structure/)
 * [templates](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/templates/)
 * [Themes](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/themes/)

 * In: [Everything else WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/miscellaneous/)
 * 1 reply
 * 1 participant
 * Last reply from: [jgclarke](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jgclarke/)
 * Last activity: [13 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/structuralopinion-question/#post-2822403)
 * Status: not resolved

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