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Your templates library

Templates are saved starting points. A template is inert: nothing in your library is on your live site until you deliberately use it. That is the whole point of the library — it means installing something from the marketplace can never publish pages to a site you are running.

Find it at Templates in a site's navigation, alongside Pages, Layouts and Components — the three things a template can produce.

A template is a copy, not a live link: once you use one, the result is yours outright and editing the template never changes what you already made. If you want one edit to update every place a thing appears, you want a reusable component. If you want one frame around many pages, you want a layout.

Filters in the library's toolbar narrows it by Kind (page, component, or layout), Source (marketplace, starter, or saved here), name (a word of it, or the whole name), or the date it was last updated, and Search finds a template by the start of any word of its name — a starter by its starter's name. Every filter and the search word are part of the library's query, so they look through every template on the site, and the library pages through the matches. Each filter in force shows as a chip above the table. A name "contains" filter cannot be asked beside a search: while a search is typed it is left out, and the table says which one and why. The library lists templates by ID, and an Updated filter lists the matches most recently updated first. See Filter and search a list.

The three kinds​

KindWhat it holdsWhat you get from it
PageA page's contentA new page, unpublished
ComponentAn element treeA reusable component, or a drop onto a page
LayoutPage chrome — header, footer, navigationA new shared layout

Installing from the marketplace​

Installing a marketplace template adds it to your library and publishes nothing. A site template arrives as one page template per page it contains, so you choose which of them you actually want, and when.

This is deliberate: browsing and installing should never be able to change a site that real people are looking at. If the template was designed around a particular theme, that theme travels with it rather than being applied to your site.

A marketplace component or layout brings the properties it declares — each one's kind, label, help text, answers, settings and condition — so its {{prop.*}} tokens still have properties to fill them, and updating to a newer version takes the publisher's new properties with it. A property's default is checked before it reaches your site the same way the published design is: a link, an image address, or formatted text that could run script is removed, and the property arrives with no default instead. The property itself always comes through, so its field still shows wherever you use the component or layout. A link or image the design takes from a Link or Image property arrives still bound to it, so each page that places the component sets its own address. A condition rule whose pattern could not be matched on your pages is removed on the way in, and the rest of the condition comes through.

Saving something as a template​

Look for Save as template:

  • Pages list — saves the page's published content
  • Layouts list — saves the layout, including its content slot
  • Components list — saves the component definition

A page template captures the published version of a page. If a page has never been published there is nothing to capture, and Aglyn will tell you to publish it first rather than saving an empty template that fails later.

The original is never touched. Saving a template copies it.

Using a template​

Use creates something new from the template — the template itself stays in your library, so you can use it as many times as you like.

  • A page template asks for a name and an address, then creates the page and publishes it. If the address is already taken, Aglyn adds a number rather than overwriting the page that's there.
  • Component and layout templates just create the component or layout; there is no address to pick. The properties the component or layout declared come with it, so every {{prop.*}} token in it still has a property to fill it.

If a template defines placeholders, you'll be asked to fill them in first — the values are substituted into the content as it's created. A template might use {{who}} in its copy and ask you for "Who". A component or layout property's {{prop.*}} token is never a placeholder: it stays in the content, bound to its property.

Nothing you create is linked back to the template afterwards. Editing a page will never change the template, and updating a template will never change pages you already made.

Generate a page template with Aglyn AI​

An AI build job can make a page template for the pages your site builds from records it already keeps: each entry of a content collection (a blog post, an event, a case study), each product, or each author. Everything that changes from one record to the next is bound with the tokens the Besigner's insert picker offers for that page, such as {{entry.title}} in the heading and {{entry.coverImage}} in the cover image, and the blocks that fill themselves on that page, such as Entry Meta and Entry Body, are placed where they belong. The job proposes a plan first and builds once you confirm it, following the building rules.

Open Templates for the site and choose Create with AI, beside Create Template. Write what each page should show, and under One page for each pick what the site draws a page for: Collection entry, then the collection whose entries it shows, Product or Author. Then choose Plan the template. The window shows the plan when it is ready, with Confirm plan; Open AI jobs follows the job in the Assist panel instead.

The template lands in your library as Saved here, like one you saved yourself. It is bound to no collection, changes nothing on your site, and counts against your template allowance. To put it to work, Use it to create the page, then pick that page right away as the collection's Entry page in Content, the product page template in Store settings, or the Author page template on the Authors tab. Until you pick it, the new page shows its tokens at its own address; once picked, it stops serving there and renders each record instead.

Where a template came from​

Every template shows a badge:

  • Saved here — you created it on this site
  • Marketplace — installed from a marketplace listing, with its version
  • Starter — one of Aglyn's first-party starter templates

That badge is set by Aglyn, not by whoever made the template, so a listing cannot claim to be something it is not.

First-party starters​

Aglyn's starter sites (Landing Page, Business, Portfolio, the two Shop starters) are ordinary templates in your library — not a separate, locked-down kind. Every site gets its own copy, so you can open a starter in the besigner, edit it, keep versions of it, and use it to create pages exactly like a template you saved yourself. They carry the Starter badge, and they don't count against your plan's template allowance.

A multi-page starter arrives as one template per page (the Shop starters are five), and Start from a template still shows them grouped as one card that creates all of the pages at once.

Your Templates list groups them the same way: one row per starter, labeled with its page count, and its actions act on all of those pages — Use creates every page, and Delete removes every page. Open the row to see the pages individually; each one is an ordinary template you can edit, use or delete on its own from there.

Because your copy is yours, editing a starter is safe: Aglyn will not overwrite it later. Delete one you don't want and it stays deleted.

Templates are per-site​

A template lives on the site you saved it to. That keeps a template next to the pages, layouts and components it was built from.

Marketplace plugins and add-ons work differently: those install once for the whole organization and apply to every site, and a site can override the organization's choice for itself.

Duplicating​

Duplicate… in a template's row menu makes a second template with the same element tree, placeholders, properties and SEO fields, named Copy of <template> unless you type another name. A copy of a marketplace or starter template is your own — it is listed as Saved here and counts against your template allowance like one you saved yourself. Starter bundles are used, not duplicated: use the bundle to get its pages.

Deleting​

Deleting a template removes it from your library. Anything you already created from it is unaffected — a page made from a template is a normal page, with no ongoing link back to it.