If you're familiar with ASP.NET development in Visual Studio 2005, you may choose to develop web sites using standard ASPX page templates. ASPX page templates in Kentico CMS are standard ASP.NET pages that display content from Kentico CMS. They receive the aliasPath URL parameter that tells the page template which page should be displayed.
What is a page template?
Every web page is based on some page template. The page template can be specific for a single web page ("ad hoc" page template) or it can be re-used for several pages. The following picture shows an example of two pages that use the same page template:
As you can see both of them use the same header, main menu, sub-menu, content structure and footer - they are based on the same page template. In this way, you can create multiple pages using the same design.
What does the ASPX page template consist of?
The page template is a combination of static HTML code and ASP.NET server controls (or user controls) that render dynamic content. The following figure illustrates how ASPX page template and page content are combined to display
As you can see, the ASPX page template is a standard page that may contain HTML code, CMS server controls and any other server control. You can also use code behind (in both VB.NET and C#) to modify page behavior and add custom functionality.
How is the ASPX page template processed?
When a user requests some page, such as /services/web-development.aspx, the system calls the assigned page template with the aliasPath parameter that specifies what content (which page) should be displayed using the given template:
The built-in Kentico CMS controls understand the aliasPath parameter in the URL and render the appropriate content automatically.
As you can see, the system uses a standard ASP.NET architecture. If you developed the web site without Kentico CMS, you would most likely use URLs like this: /news.aspx?newsid=127 which is similar to /news.aspx?aliaspath=/news/november news.aspx URL used in Kentico CMS.