Page templates
Many users do not understand or it is hard to get the principle of the page templates. This article explains how it works and gives more information about page templates usage.
Template definition on Wikipedia: A pre-developed page layout in electronic or paper media used to create new pages from the same design, pattern, or style.
As the definition says, the template is used to ensure that the layout of all documents will be the same. In Kentico CMS, the layout is built from web part zones and web parts in Portal Engine templates and from user controls in ASPX templates.
If you will change (modify or remove) some web part on document A, the change will be expanded to all other documents which are using the same page template. If you have removed some web part/control with some content (e.g. editable region), you can get the content back by adding this web part/control back again with the same name (ID).
Before you will change or add any web part to the document in CMS Desk and you do not know whether this template is used also by other documents, it is recommended to save current page template as a new one. This could be done in the document Properties tab -> Template -> Save as a new template or you can use Clone as Ad-Hoc template (Re-using an ad-hoc page template).
We plan to some of the next versions to improve the templates management and also we will try to add more detailed dialog messages which will inform what could happen after the action.
See also: What is a page template
Applies to: Kentico CMS 2.x and later