By lloowen on

Hello all,

Here's a real newbie question.

What's the difference between the page.tpl.php and the node.tpl.php?

Of course I can see obvious differences in the code, but what are they used for?
I recently created my first custom node.tpl.php where I changed it to node-custom.tpl.php. This I used to display a custom content type I'd created. But could I have used the page.tpl.php to display the custom content type? Not sure when one or the other should be used.

Thanks in advance

Comments

yelvington’s picture

yelvington commented

In the documentation. http://drupal.org/node/171194

lloowen’s picture

lloowen commented

Very good book, I'll be referring to it more often in the future. Though I am still unclear as to when one should use a node.tpl.php or a page.tpl.php and how they differ.

Thanks anyway

soulston’s picture

soulston commented

I would think of the page.tpl.php as holding your main css sections, like a wireframe holding the nodes, blocks and other regions. The page.tpl.php also does a few other things like call the css files, primary links and secondary links etc.

The node.tpl.php lets you have finer control of different node types. If you just create a node.tpl.php then it will effect all node types.

Drupal installs with two node types, page and story.

By creating a node-page.tpl.php and node-story.tpl.php you can have a lot more control. At first when you are just outputting the full node it seems a little trivial but when you start to get more involved you see the need for them.

The best way to learn is just experimentation.