Creating standard page types

Development model: MVC Portal Engine
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This page describes how you can create standard page types via the Page types application.

Creating standard page types

  1. Open the Page types application.
  2. Click New page type. A New page type wizard opens.

Step 1

  1. Fill in the following values:

    • Page type display name: the system displays this name to users in the administration interface

    • Namespace: namespace distinguishes your page types from the default system types that use the cms namespace.

    • Name: page type identifier appended to its namespace

      Filling the page type display name

      Important

      When creating page types, always use a unique prefix (namespace) and name.

      Never use the cms, com, om or content prefixes. The best option is to use your company name or an abbreviation as the prefix, for example: ACME_MyPageType.

  2. Click Next.

Step 2

  1. Enter a Table name for the database table that stores the page type data.

  2. Enter a Primary key name for the table.

  3. (Optional) Select if you want the page to Inherit fields from page type.

    Specifying the page table name

  4. Click Next.

The wizard creates the database table.

Step 3

Now, you need to define fields of the page type (columns of the table). To define a page type field:

  1. Click New field.
  2. Define the custom field using the field editor.
  3. Click Save.
  4. Repeat the steps above to define all the fields you require.
    Creating fields for the page type
  5. Click Next.

You can also define system fields that will be displayed when editing pages of this type on the Form tab. You can do this using the Field type drop-down list when creating a new field. Select Page field and you can then choose from the following two groups of system fields:

  • Page fields - offers system fields of pages.
  • Node fields - offers system fields of content tree nodes.

Page or node system fields will then be offered in the Field name drop-down list. If you leave the Display field in the editing form check box selected, the field will be visible on the page’s Form tab.

Step 4

  1. Choose the field that will be used as the name for pages of this type. Pages of this type will use the value of the field in site navigation and in the Page application’s content tree. Only Required  ‘text’ fields are available in the drop-down list.

    Specifying page name source

  2. Click Next.

Step 5

Select the page types that will be supported as parents for pages of this type in the Page application’s content tree.

  1. Click Add page types and select a specific page type.

  2. Click OK.

    Adding parent page types

  3. Click Next.

Step 6

Assign the page type to all websites on which you want to use it.

  1. Click Add sites.

  2. Check the appropriate websites in the selection dialog.

  3. Click OK.

    Adding sites where the page type can be used

  4. Click Next.

Step 7

The wizard has finished the configuration of the new page type.

Click Finish. You have created a new page type. 

Now, you may want to:

How content in page types is stored

The new page type has its own database table for its specific fields. Each page is stored in three tables: CMS_Tree (tree structure), CMS_Document (page properties, metadata and content defined on the Page tab) and the custom table - for example, custom_Computer.

The system automatically ensures all operations are performed correctly on these tables. The advantage of this storage is that it is very fast and you can easily write standard SQL SELECT queries to retrieve data from the Microsoft SQL Server database.