Template parts

Template Parts let you design the header, footer and other site-wide blocks in Elementor, then choose where each one appears with rules such as “Entire Website”, “All Posts” or “Only the Contact page”.

Needs: Elementor and Advanced Custom Fields Pro. The rule fields use ACF repeaters, which are part of ACF Pro.

Template types

Type	Value	Shown
Header	header	Where its display rules match
Footer	footer	Where its display rules match
Above Footer	above_footer	Where its display rules match, typically a call-to-action above the footer
404 Page	404	On 404 pages. No rules needed.
Submenu	submenu	Wherever the theme or a shortcode places it, for example inside a mega menu
Custom	custom	Wherever the theme or a shortcode places it

Creating a template part

1. In the admin, open your theme’s menu and choose Template Parts. You can also use + New → Template Part in the admin bar.
2. Click Add New and enter a title.
3. Under Template Settings, choose a Template Type.
4. For headers, footers and above-footer blocks, add Display Rules and, if needed, Exclude Rules.
5. Optionally add a Note. It appears only in the admin list.
6. Publish, then click Edit with Elementor to design the template.

The editor opens on a blank Elementor Canvas page. Template parts can’t be viewed on the front end by visitors; anyone who can’t edit posts is redirected to the home page.

Display and exclude rules

Each rule is one location. A template appears if any display rule matches and no exclude rule matches. A template with no display rules does not appear anywhere.

Group	Rule	Matches
Basic	Entire Website	Every page
	All Singulars	Every single post, page or custom post
	All Archives	Every archive page
Special Pages	404 Page	The 404 page
	Search Page	Search results
	Blog / Posts Page	The posts page
	Front Page	The front page
	Date Archive	Date archives
	Author Archive	Author archives
	WooCommerce Shop Page	The shop page
Post Types	All Posts	Single items of that post type
	All Posts Archive	That post type’s archive
	All Categories Archive	Archives of that taxonomy
Specific Target	Specific Pages	Chosen posts, pages or terms

The Post Types group lists every public post type and taxonomy on your site.

When several templates match

If more than one published template of the same type matches a page, the one with the most specific rule wins:

Priority	Rule
100	Specific Pages
50	Any Special Pages rule
40	Taxonomy archive
30	Post type archive
20	All items of a post type
10	All Singulars, All Archives
1	Entire Website

For example, with a site-wide header set to Entire Website and a second header set to Specific Pages → Contact, the Contact page uses the second header and every other page uses the first.

A template’s priority is the highest priority among its display rules.

Shortcode

Every template part has a shortcode, shown in the Shortcode box on the edit screen and in the admin list. Click it to copy.

[vlt_template_part id="123"]

The shortcode renders any template part type, ignoring display rules. Use it for Submenu and Custom templates, or to place a block inside other content.

Output:

<div class="vlt-tp-template" data-template-id="123">…</div>

Rendering in a theme

The plugin doesn’t change your theme’s header.php or footer.php. The theme asks for the matching template through a filter and decides what to do when nothing matches:

// header.php
$header = apply_filters( 'vlt_toolkit_tp_header', '' );

if ( $header ) {
	echo $header; // phpcs:ignore WordPress.Security.EscapeOutput
} else {
	get_template_part( 'template-parts/header/default' );
}

Filter	Returns
vlt_toolkit_tp_header	Matching header
vlt_toolkit_tp_footer	Matching footer
vlt_toolkit_tp_above_footer	Matching above-footer block
vlt_toolkit_tp_404	404 template

Each returns an empty string when no template matches. Otherwise it returns the Elementor content wrapped like this, with the template’s CSS already enqueued:

<div class="vlt-tp vlt-tp--header" data-template-id="123">…</div>

Listing templates

To fill a theme option or a select control with template parts of one type:

$submenus = vlt_toolkit_populate_template_by_type( 'submenu' );
// [ 123 => 'Services mega menu', 456 => 'Shop mega menu' ]

$all = vlt_toolkit_populate_template_by_type(); // every type

Technical details

Post type	vlt_tp
Capability needed to create, edit or delete	manage_options
ACF field group	group_vlt_tp_settings
Meta fields	template_type, display_rules, exclude_rules, note

The admin list has Display Rules, Note and Shortcode columns, the template type shown next to each title, and a dropdown to filter by type.