Kentico CMS 6.0 Developer's Guide

Managing page template catalog

Managing page template catalog

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Managing page template catalog

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You can manage page templates in Site Manager -> Development -> Page templates. Here you can organize the templates into categories, configure their properties, create new templates, etc.

 

These configuration options can also be accessed for the templates of individual pages by selecting the page in the content tree of CMS Desk, and using Edit -> Properties -> Template -> Edit template properties.

 

Each template has the following properties:

 

General tab

 

On this tab, you can specify the following properties of the page template:

 

Template display name

The name of the template displayed to users.

Template code name

The name of the template used in website code.

Category

Here you can choose the category of the page template.

Template description

Description of the template shown in the page template selection catalog.

Thumbnail

Teaser (preview) image assigned to the template. It is displayed in the page template catalog, e.g. when creating a new page.

Template type

Determines the type of pages that the template can be used for. The following options are available:

 

Portal page - functions as a standard portal engine page template.

ASPX page - uses the ASPX page template development model and is based on a standard ASPX web form. If selected, the path to the source file must be entered into the File name property.

ASPX + Portal page - works the same way as the ASPX page option, but also supports certain portal engine functionality, such as managing web parts or widgets in predefined zones on the Design tab of CMS Desk directly through the browser.

Dashboard page - provides a template for dashboard sections of the CMS interface. This type of page template cannot be used for standard content tree pages.

Master template

Only available if the Template type is set to Portal page. Indicates if the pages that use the template should be Master pages. Master page templates are usually used for the main menu and logo of a website.

 

Enabling this also causes the template to be selectable as the root master page template in the New site wizard.

Inherit content

Only available if the Template type is set to Portal page. Configures the visual inheritance as explained in the Visual inheritance topic.

 

You can choose from the following options:

 

Inherit all - inherits the content of all parent pages

Do not inherit any content - displays only the current page without any parent content

Inherit only master page - inherits from the first master page above the page in the content tree, i.e. if there are more master pages, it inherits only from the one which is the closest above it in the hierarchy

Select inherited levels - inherits only content from the chosen content tree levels

File name

Only available if the Template type is set to ASPX page or ASPX + Portal page. Specifies the path to the .aspx file that the page template should be based on. The file may either be chosen using the Select button, or its path can be entered manually. The tilde character (~) represents the root directory of the project folder, e.g. ~/CMSTemplates/CorporateSite/Blog.aspx

 

Design tab

 

This tab is available only for Portal page or Dashboard page type templates. It can be used to define the content of the page template in the same way as on the Design tab in CMS Desk, but without requiring the context of a specific site. Web parts and widgets can be added (AddWebPart), removed (Delete), configured (Configure) or relocated using drag‑and‑drop. Individual zones may also be managed via their context menu that can be expanded by right‑clicking the header of the given zone or using the Web part zone menu (WebPartZoneMenu) action. Any changes made here will affect all pages using the edited page template.

 

Sites tab

 

On this tab, you can choose which websites the page template will be available for.

 

Scopes tab

 

Please refer to the Page template scopes topic for information about this tab.

 

Layout tab

 

Here you can edit the layout of the page template. You can either choose to use one of the pre-defined ("shared") layouts or you can create a unique layout specifically for the given page template ("custom layout"). Learn more in the Page layouts topic.

 

Theme tab

 

This tab allows you to manage the files contained in the page template's theme folder. This usually includes any files required by the CSS styles added for the template's custom page layout on the Layout tab (e.g. images). For more information, please see the Development -> CSS stylesheets and design -> App themes topic.

 

Web parts

 

Here you can see the XML document with the configuration of the web parts. Use this dialog only in a situation when the standard Design mode isn't working as expected (e.g. due to an error or data inconsistency).

 

Header

 

Here you can specify custom HTML code that will be added to the <head> element (it will be placed between the <head></head> tags) of all pages that use this page template. This is useful if you need to link some additional CSS or JavaScript files.

 

Documents tab

 

On this tab, you can see a list of documents (pages) that are using the page template. By clicking a document in the list, you will be redirected to the document's CMS Desk -> Edit mode. The documents in the list can be filtered according to the Site they are on, their Document name and their Document type.