In documentation about template types I encountered difficulties to understand the differences between a base template and the other sorts which must “meet specific conditions”. Perhaps because French language would not use the base and type adjective to distinguish the both (I am not a linguist, and perhaps I am just a medium reader).
So perhaps if there is another example of base template I could help people like me ?
I would reread Base Template
short points:
a site commonly uses the same outer shell for all pages. so using a base template we do not have to code all the same stuff for every page kind.
the “blocks” are pulled in for the page kinds (not technically correct)
You may define different templates for languages, page kinds , all the lookup rules provide.
a “page” needing a complete different layout can also directly work without any baseof - see hugo/tpl/tplimpl/embedded/templates/rss.xml at master · gohugoio/hugo · GitHub for a layout without using a template
my answer might be a bit generic… if that lacks needed info or have a specific use case…