Creating and Organizing Pages

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

Organizing your Website

As an author, 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
  https://localhost:4502/editor.html/content/we-retail/us/en/products/equipment/hiking/desert-sky-shorts.html

• Publish environment
  https://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:

Page Naming Conventions

When creating a 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

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 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.

When creating a page, AEM validates 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.

Title

If you supply only a page Title when creating a page, AEM derives 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:

Name

When you supply a page Name when creating a page, AEM validates 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.

Templates

In AEM, a template specifies a specialized type of page. A template is 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 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.

Managing Pages

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, https://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:

   

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.

   

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 page, AEM validates 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 and an explanatory message shown to indicate the characters that need removing/replacing.

   NOTE

   See Page Naming Conventions.

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

   

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):

   

   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:

   

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:

   • Quick actions
   • Selection mode and the toolbar

   And then select the Edit icon:

   

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

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:

   • Quick actions
   • Selection mode and the toolbar

   And then the Copy page icon:

   

   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. The Paste icon is available with a drop-down arrow directly to the right:

   

   You can either:

   • Select the Paste page icon itself: A copy of the original page and any child-pages will be created at this location.
   • Select the drop-down arrow to reveal the Paste without children option. A copy of the original page will be created at this location; child-pages will not be copied.
   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

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:

   • Quick actions
   • Selection mode and the toolbar

   And then select the Move page icon:

   

   This opens 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.

   

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

   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.

   NOTE

   By default the parent of the page you are moving/renaming will be selected as the destination.

   

   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, or has been published, then the details will be listed in the Adjust/Republish step.

   You can indicate which should be adjusted and/or republished as appropriate.

   NOTE

   If the page is neither linked to nor referenced, then this step will not be available.

   

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

Asynchronous Actions

Page move actions are always processed asynchronously, allowing the user to continue authoring in the UI unimpeded.

• The user must define when the asynchronous operation should be performed

  • Now begins the execution of the asynchronous job immediately.
  • Later allows the user to define when the asynchronous job will start.

  

The status of asynchronous jobs can be checked in the Async Jobs Status dashboard at Global Navigation -> Tools -> Operations -> Jobs

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:

   

   NOTE

   As a security precaution, the Delete page icon is not available as a quick action.

3. A dialog will ask for confirmation, use:

   • 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.

Locking a Page

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

Creating a New Folder

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

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:

   

4. Select Create to create the folder.