Creating and Organizing Pages creating-and-organizing-pages

CAUTION
AEM 6.4 has reached the end of extended support and this documentation is no longer updated. For further details, see our technical support periods. Find the supported versions here.

This section describes how to create and manage pages with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) so that you can then create content on those pages.

NOTE
Your account needs the appropriate access rights and permissions to take action on pages such as create, copy, move, edit, and delete.
If you encounter any problems we suggest you contact your system administrator.
NOTE
There are a number of keyboard shortcuts that you can use from the websites console that make organizing your pages more efficient.

Organizing your Website organizing-your-website

As an author you will need to organize your website within AEM. This involves creating and naming your content pages so that:

  • You can easily find them on the author environment
  • Visitors to your site can easily browse them on the publish environment

You can also use folders to help organize your content.

The structure of a website can be thought of as a tree structure that holds your content pages. The names of these content pages are used to form the URLs, whereas the title is shown when the page content is viewed.

The following shows an example from the We.Retail site, where a hiking shorts page ( desert-sky-shorts) is accessed:

  • Author environment: http://localhost:4502/editor.html/content/we-retail/us/en/products/equipment/hiking/desert-sky-shorts.html

  • Publish environment: http://localhost:4503/content/we-retail/us/en/products/equipment/hiking/desert-sky-shorts.html

Depending on the configuration of your instance, use of /content might be optional on the publish environment.

 /content
 /we-retail
  /us
   /en
    /products
     /equipment
      /hiking
       /desert-sky-shorts
       /hiking-poles
       /...
      /running...
      /surfing...
      /...
     /seasonal...
     /...
    /about-us
    /experience
    /...
   /es...
  /de...
  /fr...
  /...
 /...

This structure can be viewed From the Sites console, where you can navigate through the pages of your website and perform actions on the pages. You can also create new sites and new pages.

From any point, you can see the upward branch from breadcrumbs in the header bar:

screen_shot_2018-03-22at104706

Page Naming Conventions page-naming-conventions

When creating a new page there are two keys fields:

  • Title:

    • This is displayed to the user in the console and shown at the top of the page content when editing.
    • This field is mandatory.
  • Name:

    • This is used to generate the URI.
    • User input for this field is optional. If not specified, the name is derived from the title. See the following section Page Name Restrictions and Best Practices for details.

Page Name Restrictions and Best Practices page-name-restrictions-and-best-practices

The page Title and Name can be created separately but are related:

  • When creating a page, only the Title field is required. If no Name is provided at page creation, AEM will generate a name from the first 64 characters of the title (observing the validation set out below). Only the first 64 characters are used in order to support the best practice of short page names.

  • If a page name is manually specified by the author, the 64 character limit does not apply, however other technical limitations on the page name length may.

NOTE
When defining a page name, a good rule-of-thumb is to keep the page name as brief but as expressive and memorable as possible to make it easy to understand for the reader. See the W3C style guide for the title element for more information.
Also keep in mind that some browsers (e.g. older versions of IE) can only accept URLs up to a certain length, so there is also technical reason to keep page names short.

When creating a new page, AEM will validate the page name according to the conventions imposed by AEM and the JCR.

The minimum allowed characters are:

  • ‘a’ through to ‘z’
  • ‘A’ through to ‘Z’
  • ‘0’ through to ‘9’
  • _ (underscore)
  • - (hyphen/minus)

Full details of all characters allowed can be found in the naming conventions.

NOTE
If AEM is running on a MongoMK persistence manager deployment, page names are limited to 150 characters.

Title title

If you supply only a page Title when creating a new page, AEM will derive the page Name from this string and validate the name according to the conventions imposed by AEM and JCR. A Title field containing invalid characters will be accepted, but the name derived will have the invalid characters substituted. For example:

Title
Derived Name
Schön
schoen.html
SC%&*ç+
sc—c-.html

Name name

When you supply a page Name when creating a new page, AEM will validate the name according to the conventions imposed by AEM and JCR. You cannot submit invalid characters in the Name field. When AEM detects invalid characters the field will be highlighted with an explanatory message.

screen_shot_2018-03-22at104817

NOTE
You should avoid using a two-letter code as defined by ISO-639-1 as a page name, unless it is a language root.
See Preparing Content for Translation for more information.

Templates templates

In AEM, a template specifies a specialized type of page. A template will be used as the basis for any new page being created.

The template defines the structure of a page including a thumbnail image and other properties. For example, you may have separate templates for product pages, sitemaps, and contact information. Templates are comprised of components.

AEM comes with several templates provided out-of-the-box. The templates available depend on the individual website. The key fields are:

  • Title
    The title displayed on the resulting web-page.

  • Name
    Used when naming the page.

  • Template
    A list of templates available for use when generating the new page.

Components components

Components are the elements provided by AEM so that you can add specific types of content. AEM comes with a range of out-of-the-box components that provide comprehensive functionality. These include:

  • Text
  • Image
  • Slideshow
  • Video
  • And many more

Once you have created and opened a page you can add content using the components, which are available from the component browser.

NOTE
The Components Console give an overview of the components on your instance.

Managing Pages managing-pages

Creating a New Page creating-a-new-page

Unless all pages have been created for you in advance, before you can start creating content, you must create a page:

  1. Open the Sites console (for example, http://localhost:4502/sites.html/content).

  2. Navigate to the location where you want to create the new page.

  3. Open the drop down selector using Create in the toolbar, then select Page from the list:

    screen_shot_2018-03-22at104944

  4. From the first stage of the wizard you can either:

    • Select the template you want used to create the new page, then click/tap Next to proceed.
    • Cancel to abort the process.

    chlimage_1-8

  5. From the final stage of the wizard you can either:

    • Use the three tabs to enter the page properties you want assigned to the new page, then click/tap Create to actually create the page.
    • Use Back to return to template selection.

    Key fields are:

    • Title:

      • This is displayed to the user and is mandatory.
    • Name:

      • This is used to generate the URI. If not specified, the name is derived from the title.
      • If you supply a page Name when creating a new page, AEM will validate the name according to the conventions imposesd by AEM and JCR.
      • You cannot submit invalid characters in the Name field. When AEM detects invalid characters the field will be highlighted and an explanatory message shown to indicate the characters that need removing/replacing.
    note note
    NOTE
    See Page Naming Conventions.

    The minimum information required to create a new page is the Title.

    chlimage_1-9

  6. Use Create to complete the process and create your new page. The confirmation dialog will ask whether you want to Open the page immediately or return to the console (Done):

    chlimage_1-10

    note note
    NOTE
    If you create a page using a name that already exists at that location, the system will automatically generate a variation of the name by appending a number. For example if winter already exists a new page will become winter0.
  7. If you return to the console you will see your new page:

    screen_shot_2018-03-22at105321

CAUTION
Once a page has been created its template cannot be changed - unless you create a launch with a new template, though this will lose any content already existing.

Opening a Page For Editing opening-a-page-for-editing

After creating a page, or navigating to an existing page (in the console), you can open it for edit:

  1. Open the Sites console.

  2. Navigate until you find the page that you want to edit.

  3. Select your page by using either:

    And then select the Edit icon:

    screen_shot_2018-03-22at105355

  4. The page will be opened and you can edit the page as required.

NOTE
Navigating to other pages from the page editor is only possible in Preview mode since links are not active in the Edit mode…

Copying and Pasting a Page copying-and-pasting-a-page

You can copy a page and all of its subpages to a new location:

  1. In the Sites console, navigate until you find the page that you want to copy.

  2. Select your page using either:

    And then the Copy page icon:

    screen_shot_2018-03-22at105425

    note note
    NOTE
    If you are in selection mode this is exited automatically as soon as the page is copied.
  3. Navigate to the location for the new copy of the page.

  4. Use the Paste page icon:

    screen_shot_2018-03-22at105510

    A copy of the original page and any subpages will be created at this location.

    note note
    NOTE
    If you copy the page to a location where a page with the same name as the original already exists, the system will automatically generate a variation of the name by appending a number. For example if winter already exists winter will become winter1.

Moving or Renaming a Page moving-or-renaming-a-page

NOTE
Renaming a page is also subject to the Page Naming Conventions when specifying the new page name.
NOTE
A page can only be moved to a location where the template upon which the page is based is allowed. See Template Availability for more information.

The procedure to move or rename a page is basically the same and is handled by the same wizard. With this wizard you can:

  • Rename a page without moving it.
  • Move the page without renaming it.
  • Move and rename at the same time.

AEM offers you the functionality to update any internal links that refer to the page being renamed/moved. This can be done on a page-by-page basis to provide full flexibility.

  1. Navigate until you find the page that you want to move.

  2. Select your page using either:

    And then select the Move page icon:

    screen_shot_2018-03-22at105534

    This will open the move page wizard.

  3. From the Rename stage of the wizard you can either:

    • Specify the name you want the page to have after it is moved, then click/tap Next to proceed.
    • Cancel to abort the process.

    chlimage_1-11

    The page name can remain the same if you are only moving the page.

    note note
    NOTE
    If you move a page to a location where a page with the same name already exists, the system will automatically generate a variation of the name by appending a number. For example if winter already exists winter will become winter1.
  4. From the Select Destination stage of the wizard you can either:

    • Use the column view to navigate to the new location for the page:

      • Select the destination it by clicking the destination’s thumbnail.
      • Click Next to continue.
    • Use Back to return to page name specification.

    chlimage_1-12

    note note
    NOTE
    If you move a page to a location where a page with the same name already exists, the system will automatically generate a variation of the name by appending a number. For example if winter already exists winter will become winter1.
  5. If the page is linked to or referenced, then these references will be listed in the Adjust/Republish step. You can indicate which should be adjusted and republished as appropriate.

    chlimage_1-13

  6. Selecting Move will complete the process and move/rename your page as appropriate.

NOTE
If the page was already published, moving the page will automatically unpublish it. By default, it will be republished when the move is complete, but this can changed by unchecking the Republish field in the Adjust/Republish step.
NOTE
If the page is not referenced in any way, then the Adjust/Republish step will be skipped.

Deleting a Page deleting-a-page

  1. Navigate until you can see the page you want to delete.

  2. Use selection mode to select the required page, then use Delete from the toolbar:

    screen_shot_2018-03-22at105622

    note note
    NOTE
    As a security precaution, the Delete page icon is not available as a quick action.
  3. A dialog will ask for confirmation.

    • Do you want to archive pages before deletion? - If checked, versions of the pages selected for deletion will be created upon deletion.

    • Cancel to abort the action

    • Delete to confirm the action:

      • If the page has no references, the page will be deleted.
      • If the page has references, a message box will inform you that One or more pages are referenced. You can select Force Delete or Cancel.
NOTE
If a page is already published, it will automatically be unpublished before deletion.

Locking a Page locking-a-page

You can lock/unlock a page from either a console or when editing an individual page. Information about whether a page is locked is also shown in both locations.

screen_shot_2018-03-22at105713 screen_shot_2018-03-22at105720

Creating a New Folder creating-a-new-folder

You can create folders to help organize your files and pages.

NOTE
Folders are also subject to the Page Naming Conventions when specifying the new folder name.
CAUTION
  • Folders can only be created directly under Sites or under other folders. They cannot be created under a page.
  • The standard actions move, copy, paste, delete, publish, unpublish, and view/edit properties can be performed on a folder.
  • Folders are not available for selection within a live copy.
  1. Open the Sites console and navigate to the required location.

  2. To open the option list, select Create from the toolbar

  3. Select Folder to open the dialog. Here you can enter the Name and Title:

    chlimage_1-14

  4. Select Create to create the folder.

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