SharePoint 2010 : Authoring Pages - Create a New Page (part 1)

However, if that option isn’t shown, or if you want to create a page of a different type, open the Create dialog (shown in Figure 1). Figure 1 shows how this dialog looks if you have Microsoft Silverlight installed.

Figure 1. The Create dialog with Silverlight, filtered to show only page types.

If you do not have Microsoft Silverlight installed, the Create dialog shows options to create different types of pages under the Pages and Sites section, as shown in Figure 2. Choose one of these options to continue.

Figure 2. The Create dialog without Silverlight, showing options for creating different types of pages under Pages and Sites.

In either version of the Create dialog, you find by default either two types of pages in SPF or three types if the site you are using is running on SharePoint Server and has the publishing feature activated. The three, as shown in Figures 9.1 and 9.2 are Page, Web Part Page (available on all types of sites), and Publishing Page (available only on sites running on SharePoint Server with the publishing feature). Developers and administrators may create additional types of pages, so you may have more options available to you. The section “The Differences Between Different Types of Pages,” later in this chapter, explains the difference between the three default types.

The following sections explain the process of creating each type of page.

The Differences Between Different Types of Pages

The Page option creates a blank page with room for text and web parts. This allows you to type text freely into the page and add components as required (see Figure 3). Other tasks in this chapter explain in detail the difference of how to perform different tasks in the different types of pages.

Figure 3. A new wiki page allows you to freely type text in the page, as well as add other components.

The Web Part Page option creates a web part page. This kind of page does not allow you to type text anywhere in the page but instead requires you to add web parts to the page in zones that are defined by the page’s layout (see Figure 4). This helps enforce a certain layout for pages in the site.

Figure 4. A new Web Part Page allows you to add web parts in prespecified zones.

The Publishing page option is available only in certain sites with certain features. These pages are designed to enforce certain layouts on the pages in the site and therefore are preferred for sites that need strict structure and consistency between the pages. These pages are usually slightly more complex versions of wiki pages or web part pages or a mix of the two (for example, a wiki page with web part zones in certain places). An example for one of these layouts is the (Article Page) Summary Links layout. A page based on this layout looks similar to a wiki page but with additional controls:

• A link list on the right of the page

• A control to easily change the page’s title

• A control to easily change the article date

• A control to easily define a byline

• A control to set a rollup image (an image that will be displayed by rollup web parts that list what pages are there on the site)

Figure 5 shows an example of such a page using that layout.

Figure 5. A publishing page using the (Article Page) Summary Links layout.