Six powerful page layouts from the Backbone Framework

Posted January 17th, 2012 / By Christopher in Reviews, WordPress Frameworks

One of the most mint features from WordPress is the page feature.

In addition to creating posts, bloggers have the capability to create pages, including the all important about page, the contact page, and even a welcome page if they prefer to move the index portion of their blog to another area of their overall design.

With this capability came new challenges.

Each page you create should be designed to enhance the visitor’s experience on your blog, while helping them discover what you have to offer. Whether you want people to discover your email sign up form, the products you sell, or links to your social profiles, it’s important to make it as easy as possible.

The squeeze vs. The sidebar

If you sell products or services through your blog, or funnel visitors aggressively toward a particular asset on your blog, such as an ebook or online course, you’re probably already familiar with the squeeze page and it’s important role in increasing conversions.

If this sounds a little too advanced for a beginner … let me assure you it’s really not.

The main difference between a squeeze page and a regular page has to do with the sidebar mostly. You see, the sidebar is a distraction depending on how you customize it … it gives your visitor places to go.

A squeeze page is designed to hold your visitors’ attention.

If you’re wondering how you create squeeze page — or any page — that has no sidebar … I’d like to introduce you to the Backbone Theme Framework … it gives you six page layouts to use every time you create a page or post.

The best part … you can change them on the fly, without having to worry about losing your content.

Flex your post n’ page power

This was the first thing I noticed while testing the Beta Backbone Theme Framework. Because it’s a framework as opposed to merely a theme, bloggers that use it have the power to separate their design from their code, which means no more headaches or wasted hours hacking away at code in order to customize your theme. The option is still there, of course, but ColorLabs (the company behind the framework) has addressed a lot of the most popular customization needs, including page layouts.

When creating a new page, scroll below the post until you see this:

Select the layouts that fits your needs. The image above features the full-width layouts selected, which is optimal for creating squeeze pages, landing pages, and others you’d like to limit distraction.

Take a look at this sample post I created, and how it looks with each layout.

Full-width layout

Right sidebar layout

Left sidebar layout

Double right sidebar layout

Sidebar sandwich layout

Double left sidebar layout

The layout work seamlessly

From what I can tell so far, the Backbone Theme Framework provide a smooth experience for the blogger interested in using the page layout.

I’ve been tweaking all six of the layouts for this sample page, as well as switching the theme entirely to two other Backbone child-themes (featured to the right), and I’ve yet to run into any problems.

This type of flexibility makes me wonder what the future holds for both designers and bloggers, as well as for the companies leading the way with beautiful, innovative design.

Which templates would you use?

I’m guessing a lot of bloggers out there would love to get their hands on a way to create full-width pages for their email sign up form, column content, affiliate products or services, and more, but I’d love to actually here what you’d use for your own blog if you had access to the six templates mentioned above.

Swing by ColorLabs to learn more

I’ll be testing and reviewing the Backbone Theme Framework all this week, so you can look here for more throughout the week until the launch.

If you’d like to learn more, swing by ColorLabs or connect with them on Twitter.