One of my all favorite template tricks goes back to my LJ World days.
Most people don't realize that the extends tag accepts a variable and not just a hard-coded literal value. This allows for magical things to happen when combined with a default.
The following block extends a base template named "base.html" if the base_template is not set.
{% extends base_template|default:"base.html" %}
For any page that you want to programmatically override the base template, you may do so by adding a base_template context variable to your views context values which are exposed to your template.
from django.views.generic import TemplateView class MarketingView(TemplateView): template_name = 'marketing_landing.html' def get_context_data(self, **kwargs): context = super(MarketingView, self).get_context_data(**kwargs) context['base_template'] = 'base_marketing.html' return context
This simple trick opens the door to do fun things with your website based on the day of the year or something useful like A/B test two different versions of your website's landing page. The possibilities are endless.
