Creating Your Page Templates

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4.5.5 Creating Your Placeholder Definitions

Placeholder definitions are what connect each placeholder to the content and other assets associated with that placeholder to display. How Will The Placeholder Function On The Page? The placeholder, not to be confused with the placeholder definition, is simply a mark on the page in the application to identify where there is a contribution region that is, editable area on the web page. Placeholders are simply conceptual boundaries. The actual amount of space that a placeholder uses on a web page is determined by the size of the content placed in it. The data associated with the placeholder depends on which page the placeholder is on, which happens after the site structure is complete and you begin to place content in the sections of the web site. It is the placeholder definition that determines how the placeholder functions, and what the placeholder contains. This means that you should view the placeholder as an available section for you to use and reuse content in broad areas. It is common to have a page template, for instance, with only the navigation and the header image and nothing but a placeholder in between. This placeholder would then be easily replaced on any number of pages with the content specific to those pages. The content can be broken down into smaller placeholders if your design planning has led you to create a site based on a minimal number of page templates and using multiple placeholders and subtemplates in different ways. What Will The Placeholder Definition Control? The placeholder is little more than a tag that is meant to define an area on the page where the content is shown. The placeholder definition lists which region definitions and their associated region templates and which subtemplates are available to pass information through. You can also control other details on a placeholder-by-placeholder basis through the placeholder definition. Some of these items include workflow, whether the contributor can edit the data displayed through the placeholder, whether the contributor can edit the metadata, ability to view web site usage reports, and the ability to view content tracker reports.

4.5.6 Creating Your Page Templates

A large number of web sites can be reduced to two simple page templates: the home page, and then all other pages. It is not uncommon for a web site to have a home page that is distinct in terms of layout and design compared to the other pages in the web site. It may be the case that there are multiple templates for your site. It is also possible to make an entire web site work with one page template. If you do design the web site with several page templates, you should possibly consider the use of subtemplates to reduce the number of page templates. Fewer page templates on a web site makes site-wide changes much easier. Will Primary and Secondary Pages Require Different Templates? Primary and secondary pages can both use the same page templates. However, since secondary pages are the only pages that can have dynamically placed content, you should consider the effect on how you view your page templates and even your placeholders and placeholder definitions with respect to the advantages of dynamically placed content. Planning Your Web Site 4-11 A secondary page serves as the backdrop for content added to the site by a contributor. Secondary pages are required if you allow contributors to add contributor data files or native documents both of which amount to new web pages to the web site. These files are made available to the site when they are picked up by a dynamic list, a search, or the target of a link. It may be that you first build your site with just primary pages, saving secondary pages until after you set up contribution regions on the primary pages and know exactly what type of content contributors submit to the site. Then, you could add the secondary pages to handle this content. Regardless of whether you use the same or different page templates for the primary and secondary pages in your web site, it is important that you name the page templates appropriately. This is the same for all other site assets in Site Studio. Say, a page template is used for both the primary and secondary pages. If the name of that page template was based on where it was initially placed in the site, the template name could lead to confusion when the site is expanded and the page template is being reused for secondary pages as well. The most efficient naming of site assets, including page templates, should be based on how the page template is used. Naming conventions based on where the asset is used in a web site for instance, page_template_primarypage or based on in the order of creation for instance, pagetemplate3 can make the assets harder to manage. 4-12 Oracle Fusion Middleware Developers Guide for Site Studio for External Applications 5 Site Studio Application Components and Technology 5-1