Creating a "blank page" template for Twentyeleven theme

I usually do this a couple of different ways.

One way is to create copies of your header.php and footer.php pages … something like header-blank.php or footer-blank.php. In these files strip out the top and bottom navigation as well as the sidebar.

Then on your template page (which I’ll call blank.php) instead of the

get_header();

I use:

$root=$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];
include $root . '/wp-content/themes/your-theme/header-blank.php';

Not sure if this is the best way … but I like doing it this way because if I screw something up in the header it only effects the Blank Template pages.

Or, you could do it this way in the actual header.php and footer.php file:

if ( is_page_template('blank.php') ) {
    // what to show on the Blank Template pages
} else {
    // what to show on all other pages
}

@alchmyth, do you mean it is enough for me to paste the code you provided in your post to a blank .php file and upload it to my child theme folder?

yes – create a new blank php file, possibly named blank-page-template.php or whatever name will not conflict with the reserved names (http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Hierarchy), paste the code into it, and upload it.

what code to delete in the copies of the heather.php and footer.php files

have you made the effort to check from the page template, which parts of header.php and footer.php got ommitted?