Working with shared templates in Brix

Shared Templates are Brix way to solve the problem of having the very same piece of content spread out through the website, without duplicating it every time and losing its editability in the process.

Sure, you can save a section of content in your templates library, and pick it up at a later time from the Templates Manager, but by doing so you’d essentially create a copy of it, which means that, should you change something in the template, you’d also probably have to repeat the change in any page that template had been used.

Not ideal, right? Especially for sections that you know are going to change, but whose purpose is pretty well defined, such as contact sections, or footers.

With Shared Templates you can create a template, reference it in multiple pages, edit it in one single place, and then see the change reflect automatically wherever you’ve used it.

If you’re a designer, and you’re maybe familiar with the Symbol concept in apps like Sketch or Figma, this is practically the same thing.

How to share a template across pages

In the WordPress admin, go to Brix > Shared templates and create a new template. It’s essentially like creating a page, with the only difference being that it won’t be displayed publicly.

After you’ve created your template (which can be composed by more than one section of content), go to a page you had previously created.

Whether you choose to use a specific template when adding or replacing a section, or replace the entire page content completely, when you open the Templates Manager window, you’ll notice a “Shared templates” tab on top.

Select the template you wish to use and import it in the page.

From this moment on, after saving the page, the referenced shared template will be displayed in the page, in the position you’ve placed it at the time of the import and every time you’re going to modify its contents from its editing screen, the pages that use it will be updated as well.