Use the section and page library

Thallo ships seventeen sections and five starter pages. Insert one and you get ordinary blocks with placeholder copy, ready to edit. By the end of this page you will have put a whole starter page on an entry, added a single section to it, and aimed an insert at an exact place.

You need an entry with a blocks field open in the Design view. Build your first page gets you there.

Open the library#

Open the Blocks tab in the side panel. Above the tiles are three views: Blocks, Sections and Templates. Blocks offers one block type at a time. Sections and Templates are the library; in the Design view, Templates holds whole starter pages. The switch appears only when the library has something to offer.

The box at the top filters the view you are in — Filter sections…, Filter templates… — and matches a pattern's name, its category and its description.

The library is part of the Design view, and of the header and footer editor (Site › Header & footer). Each offers only what belongs there: the Design view never shows the header's and footer's sections, and the header and footer editor never shows a page body's. There, Templates holds whole headers and footers instead of pages, and both views show only the region you are editing — header sections and templates while Header is on, footer ones on Footer. See headers and footers.

Insert a section#

Open Sections. The cards are grouped by category, each showing a picture of what it inserts.

Where a section lands depends on what you did before clicking:

• Nothing selected: the end of the entry's first blocks field.
• A block selected: straight after that block.
• A place armed: that place. Press Add block after on a block's toolbar on the stage, or Add on a slot row in the Block tab. The Blocks tab opens and says which place it is holding — Inserting after Hero — with Cancel beside it. Escape in the filter box clears it too.

Then insert:

1. Click a card. The section arrives as one block, becomes the selection, and the stage scrolls to it with the inspector on the Block tab.
2. Or press and drag the card onto the stage. A ghost carries the section's name and the stage shows where it would go. Release outside the stage, or press Escape, and nothing is inserted.
3. Or type in the filter box and press Enter, which inserts the first card that is offered.

Each of the four Hero sections is a single Hero block; every other section is a single Container. So a section moves, duplicates and deletes as one thing, and one undo removes it.

Insert a whole page#

Open Templates and click a card. A page has no drag: clicking is the only way in.

Its sections are inserted one after another at the same place, as one transaction. One undo takes the whole page back out.

Every starter page opens with a section that carries the page's heading, so inserting one also sets Show page title on the Page tab to Hide; otherwise the theme would print the entry's title above it as a second heading. Thallo says so when it does. Set it back to Show if you want both.

A page goes in whole or not at all. If the sequence would not fit — a slot that refuses containers, or the five-level nesting cap — Thallo inserts nothing and says That template does not fit here.

What ships#

Category	Sections
Hero	Centred hero · Hero with highlights · Dark hero · Page header
Features	Feature grid · Six features · Features beside text · How it works
Social proof	Numbers · Testimonials
Pricing	Pricing plans
FAQ	FAQ
Call to action	Call to action · Call to action, split
Content	Our story · Latest posts
Contact	Contact form

Page	Sections
Landing page	Centred hero · Feature grid · How it works · Testimonials · Pricing plans · FAQ · Call to action
About	Page header · Our story · Numbers · Testimonials · Call to action, split
Pricing	Page header · Pricing plans · FAQ · Call to action
Contact	Page header · Contact form · FAQ
Services	Hero with highlights · Six features · How it works · Call to action, split

Shop sections and templates#

With Commerce on, the library also offers a Shop category and four shop pages. Switch Commerce off and all of them are hidden. Pages already built from them keep their blocks.

Category	Sections
Shop	New arrivals · Collection grid · Featured product · Add-to-cart call to action · Sale banner · Reasons to buy · Product FAQ · Shop call to action

Page	Sections
Shop landing	Sale banner · New arrivals · Featured product · Reasons to buy · Shop call to action
Product launch	Featured product · Feature grid · Product FAQ · Add-to-cart call to action
Sale / collection	Sale banner · Collection grid · Reasons to buy · Shop call to action
New arrivals	Page header · New arrivals · Featured product · Shop call to action

A card marked Choose a product after inserting it holds a Featured product or Add to cart block with no product set. Select that block and enter a product slug. On a page linked to a product, either block can instead stay blank and use the linked product. Until the block has a product, the stage shows Featured product — choose a product or Add to cart — choose a product in its place. On the published site the block hides. A reader without JavaScript sees a Browse the shop link there instead.

The product grids in these sections start on the newest products, so they work as inserted on any shop. To show one category instead, select the grid and set its source and category slug.

Product launch opens with the featured product rather than a page heading, so it leaves Show page title as it is. The other three shop pages hide it, like every starter page.

Headers and footers#

The header and footer have a library of their own. Their sections are one block each, built to fill the region's row, and insert like any other section. A template is a whole header or footer: it replaces the region's blocks. If the region already has blocks, Thallo asks first — Replace the whole header with Classic header? Undo brings it back. — and changes nothing until you press Replace. The replace is one step: a single Undo puts the old header back. Nothing is saved until you press Save, as with any other change there.

Region	Sections
Header	Logo, menu and button · Announcement bar · Centred logo and menu
Footer	Link columns · Copyright and social links · Tagline and social links · Copyright line

Template	Sections
Classic header	Announcement bar · Logo, menu and button
Simple header	Logo, menu and button
Centred header	Centred logo and menu
Four-column footer	Link columns · Copyright and social links
Simple footer	Tagline and social links · Copyright line

The menu in them is Main, the one a new site starts with; pick another on the Navigation block's Block tab. The footer's links and social profiles point at # and the networks' home pages. Replace them with your own. The copyright line prints this year and the site's name, and keeps itself current.

Edit what arrived#

Nothing in a pattern is a special kind of thing. Every part of it is a block you already have, and after the insert the library has no hold on it: editing a section changes that page and nothing else.

Two sections carry more than copy.

• Latest posts holds a Blog posts block set to the three newest entries of the post content type. With no published posts, the stage shows No posts found. and the public page renders nothing there.
• Contact form holds a form named Contact, set to store the submission and email it. See add a form and receive submissions for where submissions arrive and what mail settings it needs.

No pattern names an image, so nothing arrives broken on a site with an empty media library.

Sections and templates in layouts#

The layout editor (Site › Layouts) has the same Blocks, Sections and Templates switch in its Blocks tab. Sections lists, in order, the sections made for that kind of page, then the shipped page sections, then the sections saved from layouts of the same kind. Saved page sections and header and footer sections are not offered there. Templates lists three whole layouts for that kind of page. See start from a template.

Layout	Templates	Sections
Single post	Classic article · Magazine (a full-width cover under the title) · Minimal	Article header · Cover band · Related posts · Previous / next
Listing	Card grid · Horizontal list · Compact	Listing header · Page navigation bar
Archive	Term header with grid · Horizontal list · Compact	Term header
Product page	Gallery left · Gallery on top · Story-led	Product hero · Details band · Story band
Shop home	Adaptive grid · Banner and grid · Category-led	Shop banner · Category chips band
Shop categories	Adaptive grid · Banner and grid · Chips on top	Category banner

The product and shop layouts need Commerce on. Classic article, Horizontal list, Gallery left and Adaptive grid are the layouts those pages start with.

Each section and template is built for the layout's own content type. It shows that type's own body field, whatever it is called, and it is left out where the type cannot show it. For example, the Cover band is offered only to a type with a cover field, and a type with no body gets templates without one. No section holds the block a layout must keep exactly once. The Product hero is the gallery beside the name, rating and price, and the layout keeps its own buy box.

A section is checked against the whole layout before it goes in. One that would add a second copy of a block the layout keeps once, or that shows a field this type does not have, is dimmed. Its tooltip says why: This section shows “Subtitle”, which Pages doesn’t have. Clicking or dragging it changes nothing.

Save your own sections#

Any block you have built — a card, a pricing box, a container holding a whole band of blocks — can join the library:

1. Select it on the stage (or in the Outline), so its Block tab opens.
2. Press the bookmark button beside the block's name, Save as section.
3. Give it a Name, and optionally a Category (it goes under Saved otherwise) and a Description, then press Save section.

It appears under Sections, in its category, with your other sections, and is inserted the same way: click it, or drag it onto the stage. What you insert is a copy — change it freely on the page; the saved section stays as it was, and pages that used it keep their copies when you later rename or delete it. A saved section has no picture on its card, only its name and description.

A saved section is one block and everything inside it. To save several blocks as one section, put them in a Container first and save the container. Saved sections belong to the site, so everyone who edits content sees them; saving, renaming and deleting one needs the right to manage content. The pencil and bin on a saved section's card rename and delete it.

A section saved in the header and footer editor belongs to the region you saved it from. It is offered there again, under that region's Sections, and never in the Design view. A section saved in the Design view is never offered in the header or footer. Only a block the region takes at its top level can be saved from there. A container always qualifies. A heading does not, since neither region takes a bare heading.

A section saved in the layout editor belongs to that kind of layout. It keeps its field blocks, bound to the fields they show there, and it is offered in every layout of the same kind, for example every single-post layout, whatever its content type. In a layout of a type that lacks one of those fields, it is dimmed with the field named, and nothing is rebound. A block inside an Entry list's or a Product list's card cannot be saved, since it is part of the card's design. Saving, renaming and deleting a layout's section needs the Manage templates permission, the layouts' own. When Commerce is off, the sections saved from product and shop layouts are hidden and kept.

Why a section or page is missing#

A pattern is offered only if this site can use every block type in it. Switch a block type off under Settings › Block Types and every pattern built on it goes: switching off Pricing plans removes the Pricing plans section and also the Pricing page, which is made of it. Switch the type back on and both return. The shop sections and templates need Commerce on as well. See switching a block type off.

A card that is present but dimmed is one the armed place refuses. Its tooltip says why — Would nest deeper than 5 levels, for a place too far down the tree to hold the whole section. Clicking it does nothing; the same card is fine somewhere shallower.

If the block you armed the insert against has since gone, the tab says That place is gone — pick a block for the default place. and falls back to the end of the field.

Check it worked#

Open the Outline tab. A section shows as one block at the level you dropped it, with its parts beneath. Press undo once: the whole section, or the whole page, disappears. Press redo, then Save draft.

Next: reuse styling with style classes, which turns the settings a pattern arrived with into something you can apply elsewhere.