| |

Introducing Kadence Elements Templates: Design Your Site Your Way

With the release of Kadence Pro 1.0.4 and Kadence Blocks Pro 1.5.8, the Kadence team is delighted to announce the most powerful new method to help site owners create dynamic and highly customized WordPress sites with Kadence Elements Templates. If you’ve ever created a WordPress site and found yourself frustrated trying to customize immovable content areas for your specific marketing or business needs, Kadence Elements Templates solves these problems quickly and easily. 

The possibilities for customizing your WordPress site with Kadence Elements Templates are endless, and it’s very easy to get started doing so. 

These features help site owners create themes that dynamically show content based on a number of parameters, all found within Kadence Elements. All of the features here are a part of Kadence Pro and Kadence Blocks Pro, which are available in all of our bundles, and our annual bundles are currently available at a 25% discount.

Kadence Elements has been available for a while, but with this recent update, you can now find these new theme building tools under “Templates.”

Why do you Need Kadence Elements Templates?

WordPress started as a simple blogging platform, but with the advent of new plugins that can turn any WordPress site into a customized site with a variety of different use cases, WordPress can be so much more. However, many of the methods for displaying content are locked in. With a variety of plugin options, content areas can be even more immovable and locked in unless you know how to get into the code and customize your site for your specific needs. 

Kadence knew there was a better way. We set forth towards creating theme building using Kadence Elements Templates, a no-code method of displaying content the way you want it displayed

Are these starter templates? 

No, these aren’t starter templates. Starter templates as they’ve been known in the web development industry, are more like starter sites. Kadence has plenty of starter site templates to help you build beautiful sites.

Kadence Elements Templates are different. This functionality is much more about giving you the granular control over the display of your content on your site. Even if your site seems locked into a certain way of displaying content, Kadence Elements Templates unlocks your content and gives you the keys to choosing how content is displayed. 

Video Overview of Kadence Elements Templates

The video below walks through theme building with Kadence Elements Templates.

Getting started with Kadence Elements & Theme Building

If you have never used Kadence Elements before, or if you are new to Kadence Pro plugin, here are some steps to get you started. 

  1. Install and activate the Kadence Pro plugin. You’ll need to download Kadence Pro from your product downloads section of your Kadence account. Then, you’ll need to enter your Kadence license in the Kadence area of your WordPress admin dashboard. This is under Appearance > Kadence. You’ll need to enter both your license number as well as the email address you registered your account with.
  2. Turn on Hooked Elements. On that same page, toggle Kadence Hooked Elements on.
  3. Start creating Kadence Elements by either clicking on the “Customize” link or navigating to the Elements link on the sidebar under Appearance > Kadence > Elements.  

Creating a Template Element

Creating a template with Kadence Elements is simple. First, we click “Add New” at the top of the Elements dashboard to begin creating a new Kadence Element. Once we begin creating a new element, the page functions much like creating a WordPress page or post. 

Note that there is a button on the upper right next to the Kadence logo that will expose the Kadence Element settings. Upon starting a new element, you’ll see the Kadence element settings right away. But as you build out your template, you may see them become hidden. This button brings element settings back to the right sidebar. 

What goes into a template? 

Templates are incredibly powerful and you can add anything you want to a template. Want to add a countdown clock and add it only to specific pages, for specific users, or for a specific timeframe? All of these things are possible with Kadence Elements. Want to add a specific sale notice but only on specific pages? Again, all possible. 

If you have additional plugins installed, for example WooCommerce, there are a number of settings and placements specific to WooCommerce. Kadence Elements is customizable based on how you are using WordPress. 

Let’s review some of the general settings for Kadence Elements Templates.

Preview Settings

There is a new area in Kadence Elements that allows you to set up preview settings, so you can more accurately view how your template might look.

As the area where your Template Element will reside will likely be different than the wp-admin editor’s view, you can set the container settings for your preview within the editor using the Template Preview Settings. Set the width either using the slider or set the pixel width for your preview. 

Placement Settings

The Placement settings within Kadence Elements Templates lets a site owner determine where the element can be placed on the site. Set prioritization for elements that might be shown in the same place. An element with higher priority hooked to the same location as another will appear below or after the one with lower priority in the HTML output. You can set your template to replace general areas of your site including: 

  • Replace Header
  • Replace Above Content Hero
  • Replace Single Post Content
  • Replace Archive Loop Item Content
  • Replace Sidebar
  • Replace Footer
  • Replace 404 Page Content

Used with any (or all) of the other Kadence Template settings, you can get very creative with how your Kadence Elements Template is displayed, creating a very dynamic experience for your users.

For example, if you’d like to replace the header on the blog page, choose “Replace Header” for your Placement Setting, then choose “Blog Page” under Display Settings. Get even more creative by also selecting that you’d only like to show this on tablets under Device Settings and only for specific users under User Settings, and you’ve got a customized template specific to a precise condition on your WordPress site. 

Display Settings

Display settings can be set to display on specific portions of your site, or to exclude from specific portions of your site, and you can get as granular as you’d like with your settings here. If you have WooCommerce installed, or even The Events Calendar, the custom post types of these specific plugins are also open to display settings in Kadence Templates. 

Show on or Exclude on can be set for:

  • Entire Site
  • Front Page
  • Blog Page
  • Search Results
  • Not Found (404)
  • All Singular
  • All Archives
  • Author Archives
  • Date Archives
  • Paged
  • Single Posts
  • Category Archives
  • Tag Archives
  • Single Pages
  • Any custom post type

User Settings

User settings can be set by any user role that is set on your site. For example, you can choose to show to logged in users, logged out users, or any user role that you have. You can add rules so that you can show your template to administrators and shop managers, for example, by adding rules. Of course, keep in mind that if you’re limiting a Kadence Elements Template to show to a specific user role, then that user will need to be logged into your site in order to see it.

Device Settings

To add devices to your Kadence Template, choose which devices you would like your template to apply to: desktop, tablet, or mobile device. If this is not set, your template will show to all devices. 

Expire Settings

First, toggle expire settings on. Then, choose a date in the future when you would like your template to no longer be shown. Helpful for timeframes when you’re running a sale and would like it to automatically expire at a certain time, expire settings will not be used unless it is set. 

How will you use Kadence Elements Templates?

The sky really is the limit in how you combine Kadence Elements Templates settings to customize the experience on your website. At Kadence, we know each website is a unique implementation of WordPress, and we know that you’re looking to create personalized experiences that meet customers where they are at. Kadence Elements Templates are the best, no-code necessary way to create these unique experiences that improve your WordPress site’s ability to convert site visitors into site customers.

Here are some example use cases for Kadence Elements Templates:

  • Building a custom blog layout.
  • Customizing an individual blog post or category view.
  • Customizing the archive of a custom post type.
  • Styling individual posts in custom post type.

Get started theme building with Kadence Elements Templates on Sale

At the time of this publication, Kadence is running a 25% off holiday sale on all annual plans, including our Kadence Essential and Kadence Full Bundles. Get started taming your WordPress installations now with Kadence Elements Templates and save. 

27 Comments

  1. This is so huge and awesome. Will it also be applied to Woocommerce shop pages and maybe even the single product layout?

    1. Yes, you can choose to replace elements of the page with the Placement Settings, then choose which aspects of WooCommerce pages you’d like to apply to. You can even choose a singular product to customize by choosing Display Settings > Single Product > Individually and then selecting which product you would like to customize the display settings for.

    1. Hi Rick, we’ll create a demo for this. Choose which aspects of WooCommerce pages you’d like to apply to. You can even choose a singular product to customize by choosing Display Settings > Single Product > Individually and then selecting which product you would like to customize the display settings for. You can also choose Display Settings > Category Archives > Individually to customize a specific category archive.

    1. Hi Jochen, this is completely doable! Use a Kadence Element Content Section, and then choose Placement > Before All Content. Then choose the Display Settings for Category Archive, and select how you’d like that displayed. You can choose all category archives, or individually. If you have a few category archives you’d like to add content to, then you can set up separate rules for each.

  2. Is there an ability to show taxonomy values as dynamic content?

    For clarity, for a Custom Post Type (CPT), you make it possible to choose and display Custom Fields as dynamic content in a template. Is it possible to choose taxonomy values as dynamic content in a template? If yes, how? Thank you

    1. It depends, if you are adding an element to an archive where the queried_object_id is a taxonomy then you can pull in custom meta data from that taxonomy using the archive custom meta data option. If you want to leave more details about what you are trying to do, we can answer better. Or you can get a detailed response by contacting support with your details.

  3. Wow this sounds good! Please elaborate a little with regards to woocommerce single product… Does it enable me to place content between price, add to cart etc..? I was playing with elements the other day tying to add custom content after product title and before the price. It seemed this wasn’t possible only allowing placement before title and after price. Does elements templates allow full control to do this now?

    1. For what you’re asking, look at adding Kadence Elements Content Section. Then look at the options under Placement. There, you’ll see options for a number of various placements including before/after add to cart form. We do have more features coming for Kadence Elements specific to WooCommerce, so if you’re not seeing something, please add a feature request.

    1. Kadence Elements, including the templating portion, are a part of Kadence Theme and Kadence pro.

  4. A little over 24 hours since I read this post and watched the video, and I already have two templates in place. One is on a unique header for courses in the LearnDash system, and the other is a unique header for products in WooCommerce. And it was so easy and quick to do! Kudos to the Kadence team for this newest amazing update.

  5. Is it possible to choose an elements template while editing a page? I would love to have several templates and choose one while creating the page freely without defining hard placement rules.

  6. Hi! I am using hooked elements as templates together with ACF for dynamic content. I found out that editing my CPT with hooked elements does not fill up the template with the current dynamic content. Is it possible to edit the page with dynamic content?

  7. This is so far the most advanced Elements system, however, I wanted to replace the product item on the shop page, but I don’t seem to get the placement settings right. Does anyone have a hint?

  8. Thank Kathy, I’m using already shop kit 2.0, and I think I figured out how to create a single element for the shop page. Shop Kit could use some more documentation 🙂

    1. For that, use a different Kadence Element. Use a content section and then choose the placement setting to be after header.

Comments are closed.