Wagtail uses Django's templating language. For developers new to Django, start with Django's own template documentation:
[](django:topics/templates)
Python programmers new to Django/Wagtail may prefer more technical documentation:
[](django:ref/templates/api)
You should be familiar with Django templating basics before continuing with this documentation.
## Templates
Every type of page or "content type" in Wagtail is defined as a "model" in a file called `models.py`. If your site has a blog, you might have a `BlogPage` model and another called `BlogPageListing`. The names of the models are up to the Django developer.
For each page model in `models.py`, Wagtail assumes an HTML template file exists of (almost) the same name. The Front End developer may need to create these templates themselves by referring to `models.py` to infer template names from the models defined therein.
To find a suitable template, Wagtail converts CamelCase names to snake_case. So for a `BlogPage` model, a template `blog_page.html` will be expected. The name of the template file can be overridden per model if necessary.
The data/content entered into each page is accessed/output through Django's `{{ double-brace }}` notation. Each field from the model must be accessed by prefixing `page.`. For example the page title `{{ page.title }}` or another field `{{ page.author }}`.
A custom variable name can be configured on the page model {attr}`wagtail.models.Page.context_object_name`. If a custom name is defined, `page` is still available for use in shared templates.
Images uploaded to a Wagtail site by its users (as opposed to a developer's static files, mentioned above) go into the image library and from there are added to pages via the page editor interface.
Unlike other CMSs, adding images to a page does not involve choosing a "version" of the image to use. Wagtail has no predefined image "formats" or "sizes". Instead, the template developer defines image manipulation to occur _on the fly_ when the image is requested, via a special syntax within the template.
Images from the library must be requested using this syntax, but a developer's static images can be added via conventional means like `img` tags. Only images from the library can be manipulated on the fly.
In addition to Django's standard tags and filters, Wagtail provides some of its own, which can be `load`-ed [just like any other](django:howto/custom-template-tags).
## Images (tag)
The `image` tag inserts an XHTML-compatible `img` element into the page, setting its `src`, `width`, `height` and `alt`. See also [](image_tag_alt).
This filter takes a chunk of HTML content and renders it as safe HTML in the page. Importantly, it also expands internal shorthand references to embedded images and links made in the Wagtail editor, into fully-baked HTML ready for display.
As Wagtail does not impose any styling of its own on templates, images and embedded media will be displayed at a fixed width as determined by the HTML. Images can be made to resize to fit their container using a CSS rule such as the following:
```css
.body img {
max-width: 100%;
height: auto;
}
```
where `body` is a container element in your template surrounding the images.
Making embedded media resizable is also possible, but typically requires custom style rules matching the media's aspect ratio. To assist in this, Wagtail provides built-in support for responsive embeds, which can be enabled by setting `WAGTAILEMBEDS_RESPONSIVE_HTML = True` in your project settings. This adds a CSS class of `responsive-object` and an inline `padding-bottom` style to the embed, to be used in conjunction with the following CSS:
```css
.responsive-object {
position: relative;
}
.responsive-object iframe,
.responsive-object object,
.responsive-object embed {
position: absolute;
top: 0;
left: 0;
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
}
```
## Internal links (tag)
(pageurl_tag)=
### `pageurl`
Takes a Page object and returns a relative URL (`/foo/bar/`) if within the same Site as the current page, or absolute (`http://example.com/foo/bar/`) if not.
```html+django
{% load wagtailcore_tags %}
...
<ahref="{% pageurl page.get_parent %}">Back to index</a>
```
A `fallback` keyword argument can be provided - this can be a URL string, a named URL route that can be resolved with no parameters, or an object with a `get_absolute_url` method, and will be used as a substitute URL when the passed page is `None`.
```html+django
{% load wagtailcore_tags %}
{% for publication in page.related_publications.all %}
Takes any `slug` as defined in a page's "Promote" tab and returns the URL for the matching Page. If multiple pages exist with the same slug, the page chosen is undetermined.
Like `pageurl`, this will try to provide a relative link if possible, but will default to an absolute link if the Page is on a different Site. This is most useful when creating shared page furniture, for example, top-level navigation or site-wide links.
Used to load anything from your static files directory. Use of this tag avoids rewriting all static paths if hosting arrangements change, such as when moving from development to a live environment.
Notice that the full path is not required - the path given here is relative to the app's `static` directory. To avoid clashes with static files from other apps (including Wagtail itself), it's recommended to place static files in a subdirectory of `static` with the same name as the app.
## Multi-site support
(wagtail_site_tag)=
### `wagtail_site`
Returns the Site object corresponding to the current request.
This tag provides a contextual flyout menu for logged-in users. The menu gives editors the ability to edit the current page or add a child page, besides the options to show the page in the Wagtail page explorer or jump to the Wagtail admin dashboard. Moderators are also given the ability to accept or reject a page being previewed as part of content moderation.
This tag may be used on standard Django views, without page object. The user bar will contain one item pointing to the admin.
We recommend putting the tag near the top of the `<body>` element to allow keyboard users to reach it. You should consider putting the tag after any [skip links](https://webaim.org/techniques/skipnav/) but before the navigation and main content of your page.
By default, the user bar appears in the bottom right of the browser window, inset from the edge. If this conflicts with your design it can be moved by passing a parameter to the template tag. These examples show you how to position the user bar in each corner of the screen:
The user bar can be positioned where it works best with your design. Alternatively, you can position it with a CSS rule in your own CSS files, for example:
Sometimes you may wish to vary the template output depending on whether the page is being previewed or viewed live. For example, if you have visitor-tracking code such as Google Analytics in place on your site, it's a good idea to leave this out when previewing, so that editor activity doesn't appear in your analytics reports. Wagtail provides a `request.is_preview` variable to distinguish between preview and live:
Django supports [template fragment caching](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/stable/topics/cache/#template-fragment-caching), which allows caching portions of a template. Using Django's `{% cache %}` tag natively with Wagtail can be [dangerous](https://github.com/wagtail/wagtail/issues/5074) as it can result in preview content being shown to end users. Instead, Wagtail provides 2 extra template tags which can be loaded from `wagtail_cache`:
(wagtailcache)=
### Preview-aware caching
The `{% wagtailcache %}` tag functions similarly to Django's `{% cache %}` tag, but will neither cache or serve cached content when previewing a page (or other model) in Wagtail.
```html+django
{% load wagtail_cache %}
{% wagtailcache 500 "sidebar" %}
<!-- sidebar -->
{% endwagtailcache %}
```
Much like `{% cache %}`, you can use [`make_template_fragment_key`](django.core.cache.utils.make_template_fragment_key) to obtain the cache key.
(wagtailpagecache)=
### Page-aware caching
`{% wagtailpagecache %}` is an extension of `{% wagtailcache %}`, but is also aware of the current `page` and `site`, and includes those as part of the cache key. This makes it possible to easily add caching around parts of the page without worrying about the page it's on. `{% wagtailpagecache %}` intentionally makes assumptions - for more customisation it's recommended to use `{% wagtailcache %}`.
Note the use of the page's [cache key](page_cache_key), which ensures that when a page is updated, the cache is automatically invalidated.
If you want to obtain the cache key, you can use `make_wagtail_template_fragment_key` (based on Django's [`make_template_fragment_key`](django.core.cache.utils.make_template_fragment_key)):
```python
from django.core.cache import cache
from wagtail.coreutils import make_wagtail_template_fragment_key
