Create a page and modify its properties

With Sitefinity CMS, content authors can create pages in a simplified and seamless manner. When creating a new page, you only need to provide the essential properties of a page. At any point in time, you can further configure the page behavior by defining additional page settings. Once you create your pages, you can easily reorder and manage them from the list of pages screen. Searching for a specific page is made easy with advanced filtering and sorting options.

To create a Sitefinity CMS page, follow the instructions below:

1. On the main menu, choose Pages.
   The pages management screen opens.

2. When you are using multiple languages, click on the Filter icon , located next to the Create a page button. From the Filter pages sidebar, select the language in which you want to create the page from the dropdown Languages.

NOTE: You might not see the language list when creating your very first page, yet it will be available thereafter. For more information about languages, see Language settings.

3. Click on the Create a page button.

   Optionally, you can select a page from the list of pages first, and then click on Create a page. Use this approach in case you want your new page to be created as a child page of the selected page.

4. On the next screen provide the following details:
   1. Type page name – enter the desired name of your page. The page name is used to identify your page in the Sitefinity CMS backend. It is displayed in the list of pages, different page selectors, navigation widgets and so on.
   2. URL – This is the URL name of your page. As you type the page name, URL is automatically populated. Sitefinity uses this URL to dynamically build the full URL of the page, so it can be accessed by website visitors.
      If you need to change the auto generated URL name, click on the edit icon next to it.

      NOTE: Be aware that URL names should be unique

      To change the URL structure, you must click on the Edit structure button. This enables you to edit the parent portion of the URL as well as the page URL name, , for example remove the parent page from the URL and have your page resolve form the website root. To restore the original URL structure click on the Restore structure button.

      NOTE: Sitefinity CMS uses a regular expression to create SEO-friendly URLs from the page name. For example, whitespace is replaced with a dash. If you need to modify the regular expression behavior, refer to the Replace special characters in Page URLs article from the Sitefinity Knowledge Base.

   3. Put this page… - Specify the page location in sitemap. By default, it will be created at the root level. To select a parent page of your new page, choose the Under parent page… option.
   4. Navigation options
      • Show in navigation – select this checkbox to make the page show up in the automatically generated navigation widgets. If the Show in navigation checkbox is deselected, the page is not displayed in the automatically generated navigation, and it can be viewed only if linked or accessed directly. You can also control the page access by the page's permissions. For more information, see Grant permissions for pages.
      • Make this a group page – select this checkbox to specify that the page you are creating is a group page.
        Group pages serve as containers for other pages. Group pages do not have their own content. When you open a group page it redirects to its first subpage (child).
      • Redirect to another page – select this checkbox to specify that the page you are creating will not have its own content but will serve as a redirect page instead. Redirect pages serve as a placeholder in the sitemap, and redirect to another page from your website, or an external URL. To specify where your page is going to redirect to, click on the plus icon . On the next screen, select a page from your site, or use the Web address tab to specify an external URL to redirect to. Once finished, click Done. 

5. Click on the Create button.
6. On the next screen, select the template you want to use for your new page.
7. Proceed with adding content to your new page. If you need to modify additional page properties, proceed to the Modify page instruction in the next paragraph.

Sitefinity CMS pages expose additional properties enabling you to further control a page’s behavior. These properties can be accessed via the page edit screen, by clicking on the Edit button , located in the upper right corner of the screen, and selecting the Title & properties option. Alternatively, you can select Title & properties from the Actions context menu available for every page in the list of pages screen.

The Title & properties screen enables you to change all properties, you specified when creating a page. Additionally, you can adjust the following settings:

1. Additional URLs – click on the plus sign to configure an additional URL this page resolves on. Once finished press enter. You can add multiple additional URLs by repeating this step.

   NOTE: The additional URLs you provide are resolved from the website root. 

2. Site search and search engines
3. Other options
4. Canonical URL – this setting lets you control the Canonical URL generation behavior per page. For more information see Administration: Enable and disable Canonical URLs service.
5. HTML included in the <head> tag (except title and description) - If you want to include any additional HTML in the <head> tag of the page, enter the HTML in the text box, and it will be appended when Sitefinity CMS renders the page.

   NOTE: The system does not display the selection of template section. You can change the template directly from the page content editing mode by clicking Layout and then Select another template... button in the lower-right corner of the page. Perform procedure Apply a template to a page» Step 2 and Step 3.

6. When you are finished, click Save changes.
   The system returns you either to the Pages screen or to page editing mode, depending on where you have started.