Professional SharePoint® 2007 Web Content Management Development: Building Publishing Sites with Office SharePoint Server 2007

7.3. Page Layouts

The previous section covered master pages and a few different techniques for creating master pages in Publishing sites. Master pages enable developers and designers to define the overall look and feel of the Publishing site with just a single file, along with some additional branding files such as CSS or images. Just as in ASP.NET 2.0 sites, SharePoint sites also leverage content pages that fill in the content placeholders defined within a master page. Publishing sites take this a bit further by introducing a type of content page called a page layout. Page layouts, when combined with the master page, define the rendering and layout of a page. When the page layout is requested, SharePoint fetches the master page referenced within the SPWeb.CustomMasterUrl property and merges the two together. Developers and designers use page layouts to host editable regions of a page, implemented with Web Parts and field controls.

Page layouts have a special relationship with content types within a Publishing site. Each page layout must be associated with exactly one content type. This content type must inherit from the Page content type found in the Publishing Content Types group. Content types are used in a Publishing site to define the schema and rules for a particular type of content. For example, a Press Release content type may have fields for the title and byline, the date of the release, the press release body, optionally some reference links, as well as references with ...