Configure the project to display content

You have created a page content type – Landing page – with a field that allows for referencing another reusable content type – Slogan. The next step in line with our recommended practices is to create a Page template.

But first, let’s get some necessary configuration tasks out of the way.

Enable Content tree-based routing and Page Builder

Page templates require the following features to be enabled:

• Page Builder allows editors to design web pages using drag-and-drop widgets, templates, and other configurations.
• Content tree-based routing creates URLs for web pages based on their position in the content tree and automatically handles requests to those URLs.

When you run your Kickstart.Web project, you see a default message rendered on the screen:

Right now, this message displays for any requests to the application to prevent errors. You need to remove the line of code that renders this message; otherwise, no pages will be accessible.

Open the Program.cs file in your Kickstart.Web project and remove or comment out this line of code:

app.MapGet("/", () => "The Kickstart.Web site has not been configured yet.");

Now you can enable the Page Builder and Content tree-based routing in your middleware pipeline.

Un-comment the lines calling UsePageBuilder and UseWebPageRouting from the features collection passed to builder.Services.AddKentico.

...
// Enable desired Kentico Xperience features
builder.Services.AddKentico(features =>
{
    features.UsePageBuilder();
    // features.UseActivityTracking();
    features.UseWebPageRouting();
    // features.UseEmailStatisticsLogging();
    // features.UseEmailMarketing();
});
...

Add using directives for Kentico.PageBuilder.Web.Mvc and Kentico.Content.Web.Mvc.Routing to resolve errors.

using Kentico.Content.Web.Mvc.Routing;
using Kentico.PageBuilder.Web.Mvc;
...

Provide PageBuilderOptions with the Landing page content type name to the UsePageBuilder method – add using Kickstart to resolve errors.

...
using Kickstart;
...
builder.Services.AddKentico(features =>
{
    features.UsePageBuilder(new PageBuilderOptions {
        ContentTypeNames = new[] {
            LandingPage.CONTENT_TYPE_NAME,
        }
    });
    ...
});
...

If you run your project now, your website will display an HTTP 404 error. That’s because you removed the temporary message, and we haven’t defined a home page yet. We will fix that soon. You should still be able to sign in to the administration UI when you navigate to ~/admin.

Create a ViewImports file

The second small step in preparation for displaying content is setting up a ViewImports file.

ViewImports files allow sharing directives across all views in the application or a particular subdirectory. (Typically @using directives and tag helpers.)

Many templates and components will need to use the same resources. Let’s make things easier and use a global _ViewImports file to centrally manage imports for all future templates.

Create a new empty Razor view named _ViewImports.cshtml in the root of your Kickstart.Web project.

Add the following directives and tag helpers:

@using CMS.Helpers
@using Kentico.Web.Mvc
@using Kentico.PageBuilder.Web.Mvc
@using Kentico.Content.Web.Mvc.PageBuilder

@addTagHelper *, Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.TagHelpers
@addTagHelper *, Kentico.Content.Web.Mvc
@addTagHelper *, Kentico.Web.Mvc
@addTagHelper *, Kickstart.Web

This will allow any future page template views you add to use common features without explicit @using directives.

Now that you have added these configurations to your project let’s move on to the next step: building a page template.