Create and manage pages

With Sitefinity CMS, content authors can create pages in a simplified and seamless manner. When creating a new page, you only need to provide the essential properties of a page. At any point in time, you can further configure the page behavior by defining additional page settings. Once you create your pages, you can easily reorder and manage them from the list of pages screen. Searching for a specific page is made easy with advanced filtering and sorting options.

Procedure

To create a Sitefinity CMS page, perform the following:

1. On the main menu, click Pages.
   The Pages management screen opens.
2. When you are using multiple languages, click on (Filter pages) located next to the Create a page button. From the Filter pages sidebar, select the language in which you want to create the page from the dropdown Languages.
3. Click on the Create a page button.

   Optionally, you can create a page as a child of another page by selecting the checkbox of the parent page and clicking Create a page.

4. On the next screen provide the following details:
   1. Type page name – enter the desired name of your page. The page name is used to identify your page in the Sitefinity CMS backend. It is displayed in the list of pages, different page selectors, navigation widgets and so on.
   2. URL – This is the URL name of your page. As you type the page name, URL is automatically populated. Sitefinity uses this URL to dynamically build the full URL of the page, so it can be accessed by website visitors.
      If you need to change the auto generated URL name, click the  (Edit) icon next to it.

      NOTE: URL names must be unique.

      To change the URL structure, you click the Edit structure button. This enables you to edit the parent portion of the URL as well as the page URL name, for example remove the parent page from the URL and have your page resolve form the website root. To restore the original URL structure, click the Restore structure button.
   3. Put this page… – Specify the page location in the sitemap. By default, it will be created at the root level. To select a parent page of your new page, choose the Under parent page… option, then select the parent page from the popup list.
   4. Navigation options
      • Show in navigation – select this checkbox to make the page show up in the automatically generated navigation widgets. If the Show in navigation checkbox is deselected, the page is not displayed in the automatically generated navigation, and it can be viewed only if linked or accessed directly. You can also control the page access by the page's permissions. For more information, see Grant permissions for pages.
      • Make this a group page – select this checkbox to specify that the page is a group page.
        Group pages serve as containers for other pages. Group pages do not have their own content. When a visitor opens a group page, it redirects to its first subpage (child).
      • Redirect to another page – select this checkbox to specify that the page you are creating will not have its own content but will serve as a redirect page instead. Redirect pages serve as a placeholder in the sitemap, and redirect to another page from your website, or an external URL. To specify where your page redirects to, click (Select page). On the next screen, select a page from your site or use the Web address tab to specify an external URL to redirect to. Once finished, click Done. 

5. Click Create.
   The Select a template page appears.
6. Select the template you want to use for your new page. The selected template determines your page framework (MVC or .NET Core).

   NOTE: This step is mandatory. If you want to start from scratch and define your page layout directly using the layout editor, select the default template for the corresponding framework. The default template contains one placeholder.

7. Proceed with adding content to your new page.

If you need to modify additional page properties, see the Modify page title and properties section below.

Sitefinity CMS pages expose additional properties that enable you to further control a page’s behavior. To access these properties, on the page edit screen, click  (More options) located in the upper right corner of the screen, and selecting the Title & properties option. Alternatively, you can select Title & properties from the Actions context menu available for every page in the list of pages screen.

The Title & properties screen enables you to change all properties you have specified when creating a page. Additionally, you can adjust the following settings:

You use keywords to fine-tune internal search results. You can add keywords to pages with the New UI using custom fields. To do this, perform the following:

Create the custom field

1. In Sitefinity CMS backend, click Pages.
   
2. Click (Settings for pages) to open the Settings for pages sidebar.
   
3. Click Custom fields for pages.
4. To add a custom field, in Custom fields section, click Add a field… button.
   A dialog window opens.
5. In Type dropdown box, select Short text.
6. In the Name field add a name for the field.
   For example, enter PageSearchKeywords.
   The name of the field is different from its label. The name of the field serves as reference for that field in the backend.
7. Do not select the This is a hidden field checkbox. The custom field is not visible on the website or in the backend if you selected it, you can only use it in the code.
   If you selected it, you can later unhide the field, by clicking it in section Custom fields and changing the selection on Appearance tab.
8. In Interface widget for entering data dropdown box, you select the widget which the creator or editor of the content item or page will use to complete the field.
   The default widget is Textbox. It displays an input field with labels and instructions.
9. Click Continue.
   The Settings window appears. You can configure in-depth settings, such as character limits and error messages, but these are not necessary for this example.
10. Click Done to confirm the creation of the custom field.
11. In the Custom fields page, click Save changes.

Add the custom field to the search index

The next step is to add the newly created custom field to a search index and reindex it.
To add the custom field to a search index, perform the following:

1. In Sitefinity CMS backend, navigate to Administration » Search indexes.
2. Click the search index that you want to modify.
   The Search index properties screen opens.
3. In Advanced Settings, add the custom field to the Additional fields for indexing section:
   1. In Field name, enter the name of the custom field.
   2. In Type dropdown box, select the corresponding type of the custom field.
4. Save your changes.
5. In the Actions menu of the search index, click Reindex.

For more information, see Create search indexes.

Configure the search widget

The next step is to configure the Search results widget. To do that, perform the following:

1. Open the page that has the Search results widget.
2. In the upper-right corner of the widget, click Edit.
3. In the bottom-right corner, click Advanced.
4. Click Model.
5. In SearchFields field, enter the name of your custom field.
   For example, enter PageSearchKeywords.
6. Save your changes and publish the page

RESULT: Your search results include the keywords from your custom field. You can further customize the Search box widget to state whether the keywords should be included in search suggestions when users type in the search box.
For more information, see Search box widget.
You can also customize the Search results widget to highlighted the keywords in the search results. For more information, see Search results widget.

You can view how a page looks like on a mobile device. You can do this in page editing mode.

1. Open a page for editing.
2. Click  (More actions) » Preview for mobile.
   You can see various mobile resolutions on top of the page.
3. Drag the resolution bar left or right to the desired resolution.
   The icon in the middle shows the orientation of the mobile device and the resolution is saved for your next preview when you close the page.

To configure how to display pages on mobile devices, see Responsive design.

To redirect a page from Sitefinity CMS to another page, perform the following:

1. In the backend of Sitefinity CMS, navigate to Pages.
2. In the Actions link of the page, click Titles & Properties.
3. Select Redirect to another page checkbox.
   It means the page will not have its own content. When a user opens the page, it redirects to another page or an external page.
4. Click button under the checkbox.
   The Select page to redirect to page appears.
   Select one of the following:
   • Pages from this site
     Select a page from the sitemap.
   • Web address
     Enter the URL address of the external page. Optionally, select whether you want to Open this link in a new window.
5. Click Done.

NOTE: If you created a standard page with content, switched it to a redirect page and then back to standard page, the content of the page is kept and available. However, the page is still redirecting because of the permanent redirect cache. Once the cache expires, the page no longer redirects. To configure the cache expiration navigate to Administration » Settings » Advanced » Pages » Expiration time for permanent redirect and set the time in seconds. The default is 86400 seconds or one day.

On Pages page, the homepage of your website is represented by icon.
For example, .

To set a home page, follow the instructions below:

1. In the navigation, click Pages.
   The pages management screen opens.
2. Click Settings for pages button 
3. Click the Set homepage.
4. In the pages selector, select the page you want to set as homepage.
5. To save your selection, click Use selected button.

The system sets the page as the website’s homepage and displays the icon above.

NOTE: If you do not explicitly set a page as homepage, the first page you have created is automatically set as your homepage. You cannot set a group page as a homepage.

IMPORTANT: You cannot delete the page set as homepage, unless it is the last page in the sitemap. To delete this page, set another page as homepage.

You can edit the content of a page, such as layout elements and widgets.

1. To do this, on the Pages screen, perform one of the following:
   • Click the name of the page.

     NOTE: If the page you have clicked is a group page, the system opens the Page title and properties dialog, where you can edit the properties of the page.

   • Click the (Actions) context menu of the respective page and click Content.
     The page opens in content editing mode.
     In content editing mode you can Design a layout template and Apply a template to a page.

     NOTE: A group page has no content and under Actions there is no Content link.

2. When you are finished editing the page, perform one of the following:
• If you have opened for editing a page in status Draft, Unpublished, or Rejected, perform procedure Manage pages and content items in status Draft, Unpublished, or Rejected.
• If you have opened for approving a page in status Awaiting approval, perform procedure Manage pages and content items in status Awaiting approval.
• If you have opened for publishing a page in status Awaiting publishing, perform procedure Manage pages and content items in status Awaiting publishing.
• If you have opened for editing a page in status Published or Scheduled, perform procedures Manage pages and content items in status Published or Manage pages and content items in status Scheduled respectively.
  If you are editing a published page, the system saves a draft of that page, but the published version is still visible on the webpage. To see, which version is the currently published one, see Revision history of pages.

NOTE: In page content editing mode, to see a preview of the page, click Preview button in the toolbar. The preview of the page is not a fully functioning page as it will appear on the live site. Use it to get an overall idea of how the page will look like. If you want to test how the page will look like and work of the live site, publish the page and click Live site in the upper-right corner of the screen. For example, if you use the preview mode, links to content items do not work.

• On the Pages screen, select one or more pages to delete and from the Actions or Bulk Actions dropdown (depending on how many items you have selected), available in the upper left-hand side of the screen select Delete.
• On the Pages page, click the  (Actions) link of the page you want to delete and click Delete.

A dialog box appears where you must confirm the deletion.

If you activated the Recycle bin module, the page is not permanently deleted, but moved to the Recycle bin. You can later restore or permanently delete the page from the recycle bin. For more information, see Recycle bin.

IMPORTANT: You cannot delete a parent page. If you want to do this, you must first move or delete all of its children.

IMPORTANT: If the page has translations, the system asks you, if you want to delete only the current translation of the page or all translations of this page.