Designer provides many page templates you can use and customize to fit the needs of your community. Many of these fall into similar categories and therefore have similar widgets and out-of-the-box designs. Some are a bit more complex and apply to the community globally. Below is an index and description of these categories and individual page templates.

While there are many page templates and widgets to choose from, much of the functionality is repeated throughout Designer. For more information on this functionality, see the following articles:

• Using Page Templates
• Create and arrange sections in a Page Template
• Getting Started with Widgets

Community Home template

The Community Home page template applies only to the homepage of your community. On this template, you can add any widgets you want members to see on the very first page they land on in the community. Commonly added widgets are:

• Recent Content
• Places
• Top Contributors
• Top Content

Header & Footer template

The global Header & Footer template is unique in that it applies across your entire community. It contains the site header—composed of the navigation bar, the breadcrumb trail, and the banner—and the site footer. For more information, see Header & Footer Configuration.

Container Dashboard templates

Container dashboard templates define how higher-level place landing pages appear to members of the community. The following dashboard templates fall into this category:

• Category Dashboard
• Group Dashboard

These templates enable you to provide a look into what’s available to members of that container to read, follow, and comment on. Commonly added widgets are:

• Recent Content
• Category Information or Group Information
• Members
• Top Contributors
• Top Content

Content Type Dashboard templates

Content type dashboard templates define how content type landing pages appear to members of the community. The following dashboard templates fall into this category: 

• Forum Dashboard
• Blog Dashboard
• Knowledge Base Dashboard
• Ideas Dashboard
• Event Dashboard

These templates enable you to provide a look at what’s going on in a board (forum, blog, knowledge base, events board, ideas board). Commonly added widgets are:

• Recent Discussions or Recent Content
• Forum Information, Blog Information, Knowledge Base Information, Event Board Information, or Ideas Board Information
• Top Content
• Top Contributors

Content type-specific widgets are not available on a different content type’s dashboard template. For instance, you cannot add a Recent Discussions widget to a Knowledge Base Dashboard or an Ideas widget to a Blog Dashboard.

Content post templates

Content post templates define how a particular piece of content looks to members. The following templates fall into this category:

• Forum Discussion
• Blog Post
• Knowledge Base Article
• Idea
• Event

These page templates come out of the box with widgets that cannot be deleted because they contain the body of a top-level discussion, post, article, or idea or because they contain a space for commenting on a discussion, post, article, or idea. However, you can add other widgets to these templates. Commonly added widgets are:

• Featured Content
• Related Content
• Recent Discussions

Content type-specific widgets are not available on a different content type’s post template. For instance, you cannot add a Recent Discussions widget to a Knowledge Base Article template.

Member Profile template

The Member Profile page template applies only to the Member Profile, which is what members see when they click another member’s username in the community. On this template, you can add any widgets you want that give information about the member being highlighted. This template comes out of the box with a member information widget that cannot be deleted. This widget contains the member’s username, rank, email address, join date, number of contributions, and number of likes. You can add other widgets to this template. Commonly added widgets are:

• Contributions
• Top Contributions
• Groups
• Featured Content

Search Results Page template

The Search Results Page template applies only to the page that appears when someone runs a search in your community. This page template includes the following four widgets out of the box that cannot be deleted:

• Search bar widget (with filters)
• Content Results widget (shows content matching the search query)
• People widget (shows people whose usernames match the search query)
• Places widget (shows places with names matching the search query)

Note: If the search term does not match with a particular widget type, that widget is not displayed in Designer or in the community. For example, if no places match your query, the Places widget is not visible in Designer or on the Search Results page in the community.

Refer to the table below to understand the capabilities and limitations of each section or widget on this page template.

Note: While you can add widgets to the bottom of the column containing the People widget and the Places widget, you cannot add a new widget between these two widgets.

You can also add new sections to this page template. These can be moved and deleted, and you can add Text/HTML widgets to them.

Related topics:

• About Community site structure
• About Categories
• About Groups
• About Blogs
• About Forums
• About Knowledge Bases
• About Ideas
• About Events
• About the Aurora member Profile page
• About Aurora Search

Refer to the Build Khoros Communities course for training on site design.