If you’ve been using Beaver Builder for a while, chances are you’ve built up a decent library of saved templates. Landing pages, section layouts, reusable rows. It adds up fast. And if your templates list looks like a messy pile with names like “new layout 3” or “test homepage v2,” you’re not alone. Let’s fix that.
Organizing your saved templates properly saves real time. Instead of scrolling through a long unnamed list every time you start a new page, you can find exactly what you need in seconds. This post walks you through how to do it, adding categories to your templates and giving each one a featured image so your library actually makes visual sense.
It’s simpler than it sounds, and once it’s set up, managing templates feels a lot less chaotic.
1. Setting Up Your Own Template Categories
Before you can organize anything, you need somewhere to put things. Beaver Builder stores saved templates as a custom post type behind the scenes, which means WordPress’s built-in taxonomy system works here too. You can create custom categories that show up specifically for your templates.
Head over to your WordPress dashboard. In the left menu, you’ll find Beaver Builder and under it, Templates. When you hover over that, you should see a submenu with an option like Template Categories or Categories depending on your setup. Click on it.
From there it works just like adding any other category in WordPress. Give it a name, something clear like “Hero Sections,” “Landing Pages,” “Footer Layouts,” or “Client: Roofing Sites.” The slug will auto-fill, which is fine. Hit Add New Category and you’re done.
The Saved Templates section in your Beaver Builder admin panel where all your templates live.
Create as many categories as you realistically need. A few well-named buckets are far more useful than a dozen overlapping ones. Think about how you actually search for templates when you’re in a hurry, that’s how you should name your categories.
Quick tip If you work across multiple clients or industries, naming categories by niche (like “Healthcare,” “Legal,” “E-commerce”) makes multi-client work much easier to navigate.
2. Assigning a Category and Adding a Thumbnail Image
Now comes the part that actually makes your library usable. Once your categories exist, you need to go into each saved template and assign it to the right one — and while you’re in there, add a featured image so you can visually identify it at a glance.
Go to Beaver Builder > Templates in the admin sidebar. You’ll see a list of all your saved templates. Click on the name of the one you want to organize. This opens the template’s edit screen — it looks similar to editing a regular WordPress post.
On the right side (or in the sidebar panel below), you’ll find two things you need: a Template Categories box where you can check the appropriate category, and a Featured Image section at the bottom.
The template edit screen, assign your category on the right and upload a featured image below.
For the featured image, a screenshot of the actual layout works best. Take a quick screenshot of your template preview, crop it nicely, and upload it here. It doesn’t have to be perfect — just clear enough to recognize the layout at a glance. Even a rough thumbnail is better than a blank placeholder.
Save or update the template when you’re done. Repeat this for your other templates and you’ll start to see your library take shape pretty quickly.
Pro tip Use a consistent image size for all your thumbnails (800x500px works well). It keeps the visual grid looking clean when you’re browsing templates inside the builder.
3. What It Looks Like Inside the Builder
Once you’ve done the work above, the real payoff shows up when you’re actually building a page. Open any page with Beaver Builder, click on the Templates option in the top toolbar, and switch to the Saved Templates tab.
Instead of a flat long list, your templates are now browsable by category. You can click a category name to filter the view, and if you added featured images, each template shows a visual thumbnail instead of just text. It’s a noticeably faster experience — especially if you’re handing off work to a team member or revisiting a project after a few months.
Inside the Beaver Builder template picker, categories and thumbnail images make browsing much faster.
This is also helpful if you share access to a site with a client. Instead of them accidentally grabbing the wrong layout, a well-labeled, visually organized template library means they can find the right starting point on their own.
One thing worth knowing: the category filter only shows up in the template picker if at least one template has been assigned to that category. So if you create categories but forget to assign templates to them, it’ll look like nothing changed.
Wrapping Up
This isn’t a complicated thing to set up, but it makes a real difference. A few hours spent organizing your saved templates now means less frustration every time you start a new project. Categories keep things findable. Thumbnails make things recognizable. Together they turn a messy list into something you actually want to use.
If you’re regularly building sites with Beaver Builder, small habits like this compound over time. The time you spend on the 10th project is much lower if you built a clean system on project one.
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