What I really wish wordpress could be is a combination of the widget/page editor with the placement GUI of an igoogle homepage. It would allow drag and drop placement of page elements as widgets.
A theme would still exist for the graphical style of the website, but the layout of the site could be rearranged easily using a GUI. A grid website editor built upon a blogging engine I suppose.

Perhaps some form of that already exists in wordpress, and i just need to dig deeper O_o.

If you have a blog with a “normal” navbar, where would you put dozens of navigation page links, unless you have a theme that “accepts” sub-page in the nav-bar?

One would assume that you’d customize your page menu. I have over 100 pages both here on this site and at Theme Hybrid. Neither one is clogged up.

I am so fed up of seing that sidebar always on the same place, on the same side, pages after pages, posts a after post what a lost of space and creativity!

I fail to what the sidebar has to do with our theoretical post templates. You don’t need a post template to move a sidebar on a per-post basis or even get rid of it.

Post templates would become just place holder, empty place holders that you could assign to any post, any tags, any categories you want!

Then, you would only need one if they are empty placeholders. Therefore, no need of an additional post template at all.

That very first step to the post template journey, could be either by post, by tags or by cats, the important is that someone will dare to do it!

Not a compelling reason to add them to generic themes. What I mean by “generic” is themes that are released publicly to a mass audience. The only reasoning I can see for post templates are for special design projects for clients that need a certain functionality on specific posts.

Most of the reasoning behind your want for post templates shouldn’t rely on post templates at all — that would be a bad way to go about doing those things. CSS is a very powerful tool, especially if you have a solid framework like the Hybrid theme.

I can do everything you asked with the Widget Logic plugin and CSS.

Again, I’m not convinced post templates should be added to themes. The ability for the user to create his or her own post templates would be cool though.

Post templates should be about functionality. Not form.

Pages, with template or not, can clogg your blog! I will give you a concrete example! If you go my web site at: http://ponics.org/urban-gardening-mindmap/ you will see an example of a
post template without the sidebar. Mindmaps need room!!!

Over time, I will create dozens of these mindmaps. If you have a blog with a “normal” navbar, where would you put dozens of navigation page links, unless you have a theme that
“accepts” sub-page in the nav-bar?

If I am not wrong, pages dont even have categories unless you use some plug-in. Posts have them, very handy for many mindmaps in multiple categories.

The sidebar!

Sorry I hate that name! Widget box could be better…I think!

I am so fed up of seing that sidebar always on the same place, on the same side, pages after pages, posts a after post what a lost of space and creativity! (I have seen your work and
I am very aware that you are thinking “outside of the box”, specially since your last creation “Hybrid”).

By having post templates with different widgets boxes, user could place whatevercontent inside using all kind of widgets! Post template with a sidebar on the left, another one with one widget box on top, another one with a widget on the footer, one with all of the above, one like I have with no sideabar at all. And I am not talking here of one unique widget-box. Post templates would become just place holder, empty place holders that you could assign to any post, any tags, any categories you want!

Goal: to unfreezed that ice-sidebar bar! What would happen behind the scenes in terms of programming and design time frame to raise the bar to that level? This I can’t answer!

You said: ” Should they be implemented the same as page templates? Should we create them by tag? Category? On a post-by-post basis? “. A long journey starts by the first step!

That very first step to the post template journey, could be either by post, by tags or by cats, the important is that someone will dare to do it! But hopes are small! Why! You don’t know,even in 2008, how hard is to find templates, even pages templates, that don’t have a sidebar. So …post templates! ? Be my guess!

Again, maybe I am just a dreamer!

Roger Pilon

So, the question should be, “How do you create post templates?”

The major problem is how to go about implementing them. Should they be implemented the same as page templates? Should we create them by tag? Category? On a post-by-post basis?

In that case the logical question is: why creators of WP themes offers pages templates sometimes but never post templates?

Think about the functionality of pages and posts for a moment. Pages templates are set out to do a specific task many times. Posts are almost always the same. Pages can be vastly different, but posts are more general, only needing to look and feel the same as all other posts in most cases.

You talk about creating post templates, but you don’t talk about what you would actually do with them. What would be the purpose of having a post template? Given an example. Pretend you have one extra post template. How would you use it? When would you use it?

Answering those questions is more vital than the why you don’t see post templates in themes.

We could say that blogs are maybe 90% posts and 10% pages. We could play with these stats for a while but it would not change anything important. We know that Wp is used mainly for publishing posts and not pages.

In that case the logical question is: why creators of WP themes offers pages templates sometimes but never post templates?

Having a theme that offers 15 pages templates is very good, but why is it so hard to find post templates also?

The bottom line question is this: where is the logic behind that if pages are the exceptions and posts the rules?

Give me the light Justin!

Thanks

Roger