Relating Pages, Content Items and Templates
Consider the site map for a simple dynamic, content-rich
site:
Each page in the site map corresponds to an item in the content
repository. Note that the pages in the site map have two basic
relationships to the actual content of the site:
The majority of the pages in the site are dedicated to
displaying the body and attributes of individual content items or
small logical collections of items, such as the photos on an album
page.
In addition to the content pages themselves, publishers must
implement index pages to provide context for the content of the
site. These top-level pages provide an interface for searching and
navigating among the sections of the site and for reaching recent
or featured content. Besides index pages, the site may also have
special pages without a direct relationship to content.
In order to be represented in the site map and managed in a
consistent fashion, top-level and special pages must also be
represented as content items. In the simplest case, the content
type of these items may just be a Basic Item. This is appropriate
because these pages typically possess little if any content or
special attributes of their own, acting merely as containers for
presenting aggregated summary information. If the top-level pages
of your site do possess special attributes, or if you wish to
constrain the relations on those pages, then you can also employ a
subtype.
Representing Items as Pages
There are two necessary conditions for an item to be represented
as a page:
The item must have a unique URL. This is true for all content
items. Just as the absolute path to a file reflects its location
within a directory in the file system, the URL for an item reflects
its position within the hierarchical organization of the
repository. The URL is simply composed of the name of the item
preceded by the names of all its parent items.
One major difference from a file system is that the URL includes
all parent items, regardless of whether they are folders
or not. This is necessary to ensure that all URL's are indeed
unique.
The item must be associated with a presentation template. For
content pages, the template is typically selected from the one or
more templates that are registered with the items's content type.
For top-level and special pages, the template is typically unique
to the page.