Using templates in an app

Once a template screen exists, it behaves like any other feature.

Placing one

1. Open the app builder.
2. Under Your Templates in the feature sidebar, click the project the screen belongs to. It opens to list its screens, and closes whichever project was open before.
3. Drag the screen onto a navigation bar.

Each project row shows pictures of its first three screens, so you can tell one project from another without opening it. A row showing a plain icon instead has not been photographed yet — the pictures are taken in the background, and appear on a later visit. Searching looks at both project and screen names, and opens every project that matches.

It takes a title, an icon and role restrictions exactly like a plugin-backed feature. See Feature settings.

Opening as a drawer

A template screen normally fills the screen. Under Features in its settings, Show as a drawer makes it rise from the bottom over whatever the member was already looking at instead.

This suits a short screen — a filter panel, a quick-add form, a detail card, a promotion. The member keeps their place, and closes it with the handle, a swipe down, tapping outside it, or the back button.

Three dials appear when you turn it on:

• Height — how much of the screen the drawer covers, from 20% to 95%.
• Background blur — blurs the screen behind it. Leave it off if you only want the screen dimmed; a full-screen blur costs something on older phones.
• Dim — how dark the screen behind it gets.

The setting belongs to the placement, not the template, the same as button actions. The same screen can be a drawer in one app and a full screen in another — and if you place it twice in one app, each placement decides for itself.

Every way of opening that placement honours it: tapping it in a navigation bar or menu, a Button block pointing at it, and an Entry List drilling into it. A drawer does not change which tab is selected, so the screen behind it is exactly where the member left it.

Shared editing

A placed template is a reference, not a copy. The block tree is stored with the template and read by every app that uses it.

Edit the template and every app changes, including apps you were not thinking about, at their next build. This is useful for anything genuinely shared — an about screen across three apps — and a hazard when you meant to change one.

If you want to change one app only, duplicate the screen first and place the duplicate.

Starter templates

When you create an app, you pick a starting layout. It places a bottom nav, a sidebar and the screens those open. Everything it places can be moved, renamed or removed later.

Layout	What it places
Everything on your site	Home, feed, members, chat and profile in the bottom nav, plus the main screen of every plugin the site runs in the sidebar
Community essentials	Home, members, chat and profile, with groups, events and forums in the sidebar
Social first	The activity feed first, then members, chat, alerts and profile
Minimal	Home, members and profile

Layouts are built from the plugins your site runs. When you choose an authorised site, Create App asks it which plugins are active. Each screen in a layout is then filled with a version your site can serve, and screens it cannot serve are left out. A BuddyPress site gets BuddyPress Members and Profile. A site without a chat plugin gets no Chat tab. The card for each layout lists the tabs it will place.

The sidebar holds as many rows as your plan allows. Settings, Dark Mode and Logout go at the bottom, and the other screens are trimmed to fit above them.

Drill-in screens, like Single Post and Single Product, are added in the background. Tapping a post or product opens it in the app from the first build.

Without a site

If you choose Skip for now, there is nothing to check. Instead, choose Ultimate Member or BuddyPress / BuddyBoss under Your community runs on. Then pick Full showcase to place every screen that platform supports. The screens show demo content in the preview until you connect a site in Settings → Connection.

A showcase can place screens for plugins your site turns out not to have. After you connect, those screens are greyed out in the builder’s feature list. Remove them from the nav.

Buttons that point at features

A Button block with the Feature action opens another placed feature. The target is stored on the app rather than the template, so:

• The same template in two apps can point at two different screens.
• If you remove the feature it points at, the button stops working. Nothing warns you, because from the template’s point of view nothing changed.

Check your template’s buttons after you rearrange navigation.

When it does not work

Symptom	Cause	Fix
A template is not in the sidebar	It has no saved screen yet	Add and save at least one screen
Editing broke another app	The template is shared by reference	Duplicate the screen and place the duplicate
A button stopped working	The feature it targeted was removed	Re-point it, or place the feature again
A new screen is refused	Free allows five screens across every project	See Plans and limits
A layout is missing a screen you expected	The plugin behind it is not active, or its BuddyPress component is off	Activate it, then place the screen from the feature list
Create App says the plugins could not be checked	The site refused the stored password, or its Site endpoint group could not be switched on	Re-authorise from Memberside → Getting Started, or enable Site in Memberside → REST API