The purpose of templates is to write something once that can generate thousands of different html pages for you. WSN's template conditionals syntax gives you the power to make a single template behave in many different ways. That being said, you may run across times that require something unique to fit a specific set of circumstances. That is when custom templates can be useful.

Avoid creating large numbers of custom templates -- if you're making dozens of them, odds are you should be using conditionals instead to save yourself a ton of time now and in the future. So don't go about creating a custom template for each forum, or the like. Contact support if unsure how to proceed.

There are two basic types of custom templates: custom templates which are new versions of existing tempaltes overlayed onto existing pages, and custom templates which create a new section of the site. In either case, you create your custom template at Admin Panel -> Themes -> Manage Templates -> custom templates. If it's a new version of an existing page, start by copying the existing page's template content into your custom template. If it's a new page, you can write your own content or generate some content for it from the toplist generator (Admin -> Themes -> Toplist Generator).

After you've created your custom template, you'll need to link to it from an appropriate spot. Simply add &custom=yes&TID=yourtemplatename to any existing page link (if URL rewriting is turned off -- appending this will not work if the URL is the rewritten version, so you'll want to temporarily turn off URL rewriting at Admin -> Settings -> SEO to get the correct URL). For example, to overlay on the index page or create a new site section you'd use the link <a href="index.php?custom=yes&TID=mycustompage">My custom page</a> for a custom template which you named mycustompage.