This feature is not available in all editions. Check the features for your edition to make sure this is included.

This feature can provide great flexibility within your site's design. You can create a category specific template for different pages of a specific category. Many sites concentrate on more than one market and so have numerous categories that have completely different content that other categories of the site. Category specific templates can help organize the display of information tuned to how that specific categories information needs to be displayed.

Many times administrators want to customize banner ad campaigns to specific categories. To display category specific banners may just require category specific banner information in the "calls" to the banner management system. This feature will allow you to create a category specific template with category specific banner code placed within it.

To setup a category specific template for a specific category there are a couple ways to get to the same admin tool… Firstly you click the edit button in the edit category column in the categories admin tool for the category you wish to assign the category specific template to. Then click the templates link in the following page. You should then see a popup that looks like below:

If you have more than one language setup on your site you should see a column for each language in that popup for each category specific template that can be assigned within each language. But note this isn't the actual tool that allows you to set category specific templates but is a good way to see all category specific templates are used in any specific category.

In the illustration above all templates are set up to use the default templates used within the default v5 design when you first go to this admin tool. Clicking the "Edit Attachments" button next to each will link into the actual admin tool that will allow you to assign a template to that page for site default as well as for category specific templates to that same page. This admin tool for each of these pages can be setup/found on these admin tool pages:

DESIGN > PAGE ATTACHMENTS > BROWSE CATEGORIES > [EDIT]
DESIGN > PAGE ATTACHMENTS > SECONDARY - BROWSE CATEGORIES 2ND PAGE AND HIGHER > [EDIT]
DESIGN > PAGE ATTACHMENTS > LISTING DISPLAY PAGE > [EDIT]
DESIGN > PAGE ATTACHMENTS > CLASSIFIED - LISTING DISPLAY PAGE > [EDIT]
DESIGN > PAGE ATTACHMENTS > AUCTION - LISTING DISPLAY PAGE > [EDIT]
DESIGN > PAGE ATTACHMENTS > FULL SIZE IMAGE DISPLAY PAGE > [EDIT]
DESIGN > PAGE ATTACHMENTS > DETAIL - FULL-SIZED IMAGE DISPLAY {BODY_HTML} SUB-TEMPLATE > [EDIT]
DESIGN > PAGE ATTACHMENTS > CLASSIFIED DETAILS PRINT-FRIENDLY FULL TEMPLATE > [EDIT]
DESIGN > PAGE ATTACHMENTS > AUCTION DETAILS PRINT-FRIENDLY FULL TEMPLATE > [EDIT]
DESIGN > PAGE ATTACHMENTS > SEARCH AND SEARCH RESULTS > [EDIT]

So if no category specific template has been set for a category you will see the "inherited from" note for that page in the admin tool illustrated above say "Default (Site-Wide) Template". If there are category specific templates set for this category you will see that template name and also how that template was set within the "inherited from" display.

The actual tool that allows you to set the category specific template for a category is the same admin tool that allows you to set the site wide default template for that same page. That tool looks like the following:

For more on how the above admin tool works go to the page attachment configuration page for more.

The Browse Categories template setting in the admin tool allow you to setup the home template for a category. The home page for a category is the first page the browsing client views when entering a category using a category browsing template. When the clients clicks any of the pagination links in the bottom of that Browse Categories template they will then see the secondary page template set for that category or the site default page template if one is not set. Clicking into another category will display that categories home page template if one is set or the site default if not.

Also note that the category template settings made for a specific category do not apply to that category's subcategories. If you are going to have subcategories with category specific configuration (even the same as its parent category(s)) you will need to go to each category and make the category specific configuration for that category.