Page Layouts and Master Pages

Page Layouts and Master Pages

Publishing in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is fundamentally a means of authoring and displaying information by using a set of templates. With regard to publishing in Office SharePoint Server 2007, there are two fundamental templates to understand: master pages and page layouts.

Master pages and page layouts dictate the overall look and feel of your SharePoint site. Master pages contain controls that are shared across multiple page layouts, such as navigation, search, or language-preference for multilingual sites. Page layouts contain field controls and Web Parts. The following figure shows how page layouts and master pages work together to create the layout for a Web page.

With master pages, you can easily provide a consistent look and feel for your site. You can use master pages to position items that must be shared by all pages, such as navigational controls, company logos, and copyright notices. Within master pages, you can use Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 user controls (.ascx controls), Web server controls, and Web Parts.

The top-level SharePoint site for a site collection hosted on Office SharePoint Server 2007 has a special document library called the Master Page and Page Layout Gallery. All page layouts and master pages are stored in this document library. The Master Page and Page Layout Gallery supports versioning and workflow, so you leverage those features for your master pages and page layouts.