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Pages and page types: derived and hidden pages

A page is an organization element that defines how content is displayed. A page can contain portlets and other pages.

Derived pages are children of a pages that inherit the properties of the original page. Creating a derived page is equivalent to creating a new, specialized layer on the original page. The original page and the new layer are aggregated together at rendering time. The new layer is contained within and controlled by the original page. We can give administrative access to other users by referencing an existing page while we maintain the content and layout from the original page.

Changes made to the original parent page might be reflected to the derived pages that reference it. Layers can be created on other layers to create a chain of cascading pages, referred to as delegated page specialization. This process means that a root page can be created, and the top-level administrator can decide the initial layout and content of the page. The next level administrator can then control and modify a specialized layer of the root page, adding more content and layout. This process can continue down a chain of page managers and submanagers. Managers or submanagers in the chain see only their individual layer of the chain. However, they must have the User role for every layer higher than theirs to see the content of the previous layers. A user is only able to see a layer of the page if appropriate access is given. Here are some examples to illustrate this concept.

John, the superadministrator, creates a page Home and titles it Home. Brandy, a subadministrator, manages the next level of the home page, named Home_operations. Brandy determines what more content needs be added to the Home page for employees in the operations group. Nick, the next level administrator, manages the next level of the Home page, Home_operations_transportation. Nick determines the content that needs to be available on the Home page for employees in the transportation department. Nick, as the transportation page administrator, must have the Manager role for Home_operations_transportation to change the page. The changes that Nick makes affects all users, and the User role for Home_operations and the User role for Home. Nick must have the User role on every layer that combines to create the Home_operations_transportation level. Desi, a user of the Home_operations_transportation page, must have the User role for Home_operations_transportation, and she must also have the User role for Home_operations and the User role for Home. When Desi, the user logs on to the portal, she sees one Home page. This Home page is an aggregation of all the layers that are associated with the root Home page.

Notes:


Hidden pages

Hidden pages do not show in the portal, but contain portlets that can be opened from other pages. The hidden pages do not appear in the site navigation, but are started from generated links in portlets or theme code. The feature to set a page that you create as a hidden page is not available in the UI. Follow the steps in the topic Hiding and displaying pages in the navigation to set a page as hidden. For ease of administration and conserving system resources, we can place and manage hidden pages in one place. An example is the Edit Page Properties portlet: users can start it from a link in the theme, but the portlet instance itself is on a hidden page in the content model.

Some scenarios and use cases require such hidden pages. The easiest way to create a hidden page for such purposes is to create the page as a child of the Hidden Pages label, which is a child of the content root. This label is hidden from the navigation. It is a container for hidden pages in the portal, and it minimizes the cycles that are required to render the top-level navigation links while still providing support for hidden pages.

Set your custom theme when we create a hidden page, do not inherit the theme. If we use legacy themes, be aware that they render the top-level navigation that is based on the level specified in theme policy or page metadata to render the navigation at the appropriate level. If we use such a theme and you create a new hidden page under the Hidden Pages label, set metadata value...