In this article, you'll learn how to locate your custom layouts and apply them to one or more pages.
📝 NOTE: You cannot apply a custom layout during the creation process; it must be done after it's saved.
Access your custom layouts
All custom layouts are stored in the Appearance tab of your Dashboard, in the LAYOUTS section. Here, you'll notice three subsections: Home Page, Discussions Page, and Categories Page. Your custom layouts are stored based on where they were created.
📝 NOTE: At this point, you can only create custom layouts for the Home Page. This will be expanded to the Discussions and Categories pages in a future update.
Apply a custom layout
Once a custom layout has been created and saved, it can be applied in several ways. To apply a custom layout:
- Locate and select the layout you want to apply.
- Click the ellipsis (...) menu at the top right, followed by Apply.
Home page layouts
When applying custom Home page layouts:
- All Homepages applies the layout to your "main site" and any subcommunities
- Site Homepage apples it to just the "main site" (no subcommunities)
- You can also select one or more specific subcommunities for more granular control
✔️ TIP: You can mix and match these options.
Discussions page layouts
When applying custom Discussions page layouts:
- Recent Discussions Page applies the layout to the Recent Discussions page of your "main site"
- Site Homepage applies the layout to ALL Recent Discussions pages (main site and any subcommunities)
- You can also select one or more specific subcommunities for more granular control
✔️ TIP: You can mix and match these options.
Keyboard accessibility
- Expand the Home Page subsection and click to select the custom layout want to apply.
- A preview of the custom layout is shown on the right, along with an ellipsis (...) menu. Click this menu and select Apply.
- In the resulting popup, click the Pages dropdown and select the page(s) to apply the layout to.
- Click Apply.
Custom layout tips
- You can apply a custom layout to multiple pages at once. In addition, you can apply a layout to your global site home page and to subcommunity home pages (if enabled). This allows you to uniquely customize each of your subcommunities, if needed.
- When a custom layout is applied, a visual indicator is displayed when it's selected (to the right of the title) and in the dropdown menu, as shown below. In addition, details let you know when the layout was created, who created it, the last update date, and where it's applied. This info is helpful for Vanilla communities that have multiple layouts applied to different home pages (or Category pages in the future).
- You cannot delete custom layouts that are currently applied: the Delete option in ellipsis (...) menu will be greyed out and there will be an alert to indicate why.
