Manage experience pages

In the Experience manager, you can create, edit, and publish experience pages or take them offline.

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See Synchronize pages between translated channels for translating and localizing pages.

Create a page

To create a new experience page in a channel, click the blue +Page button in the Experience manager's top bar. 

The New page form appears on the right.

If the channel does not contain any previously saved page templates, the form will let you create a blank page and the first form field will be the Page name field:

If the channel has one or more previously saved page templates, the form will start with a Type of page dropdown at the top with the options 'Blank page' (left screenshot below) or 'Page based on template' (right screenshot below), each resulting in slightly different form fields:

To create a blank page:

• Select 'Blank page' in the Type of page dropdown (if visible).
• Enter a Page name. The URL field will be filled automatically.
• Select a Document type (if there is only one type available it is pre-selected for you).
• Select a Page layout (if there is only one type available it is pre-selected for you).
• Select a Page location (pre-selected is the topmost folder that is configured to contain experience pages for the current channel).
• Click Next.

Alternatively, to create a page from a template:

• Select 'Page from template' in the Type of page dropdown.
• Enter a Page name. The URL field will be filled automatically.
• Select a Page template (click on the magnifying glass icon to open a picker with preview images).
• Select a Page location (pre-selected is the topmost folder that is configured to contain experience pages for the current channel).
• Click Next.

Regardless of the selected page type, a second New page form will appear on the right side. This is where you enter the page's embedded content. This can be content that is displayed on the page, or that is used as metadata or settings. 

• Fill in the content fields.
• Click Create.

The new experience page loads in the channel preview. The notification bar at the top displays the page's name and state. At this point the page is offline.

You can now continue editing the page by adding components to it. Depending on the pre-configured page layout, you may need to add a specific component to render the page's embedded content.

Once you are finished adding and configuring components, you can publish the page using the Publish option in the Page menu.

Edit a page

To edit an existing experience page, first, navigate to that page in the channel preview. 

Edit layout

Add, edit, move (drag & drop) and delete components on the page as shown on the Manage Components on a Page, to change the layout of the experience page.

Note that parts of the site that are shared by all (or multiple) pages, are not part of the experience page, but part of the channel instead. This typically includes header and footer containers and navigation menus. Editors and webmasters can switch between editing page containers and editing shared containers to make changes to shared items.

Authors are only allowed to edit page containers on experience pages. For them, all other (shared) containers are hidden from view.

Edit embedded content

To edit the embedded content of the page, choose Content in the Page menu. The Page side panel appears on the right, with the Content tab selected.

On the Content tab, the page's content fields are displayed. On clicking Save, your changes are saved and the page is reloaded to reflect those changes. Also, on each save of the page content, a new version of the page is created.

Save an existing page as a page template

To save an existing experience page as a template to create new pages from, first, navigate to that page in the channel preview.

In the Page menu, choose Save as page template....

In the Save as page template dialog that pops up, enter a Template name and, optionally, upload a preview image for the template.

Click Save. The template is now available to create new pages from.

Edit a page template

To edit a previously saved page template, open the left sidebar in the channel preview and select the Templates tab.

Select the desired page template to open it in the preview. Edit the page template as you would edit a page.

Disable or enable a page template

If you want to make a page template unavailable for use, you can disable it. Disabled template will be greyed out in the list of templates.

To disable a template, select it, open the Template menu, and choose Disable:

To enable a disabled template, select it, open the Template menu, and choose Enable:

Create or restore a page version

Version history

Experience pages support versioning. Each version stores both the page's embedded content and its layout (its components, their location, and configuration).

Components often refer to documents (for instance a banner component referring to a banner document). These references are part of the component configuration and thus are stored in the page version. However, the documents themselves have their own version history, which is not versioned together with the page. A component that refers to a document will always show the latest version of that document.

A page version is created:

• On each save of the page's embedded content.
• When the page is published or taken offline.
• When the user creates a version manually.

The version history of an experience page is presented on the Versions tab of the page side panel:

Create a new version

As changes to the layout of the page don't automatically result in the creation of new versions, you may want to create a version manually. To do so, open the Versions tab of the Page side panel. The 'Latest version' (the editable version of the page that you are working on in the Channel editor) of the page is selected in the list. Click the +Version button, and the version is created. It appears top of the list, marked with your username and a timestamp.

View and restore page versions

To view a previous version of the page, select it in the versions list. The selected version is presented in the site, as indicated in the notification banner at the top, but is not editable.

If you want to discard the changes that were made to the page since that version, you can click the button to Restore the selected version. As a result, that previous version is copied to the editable or 'Latest' version of the page ('Latest version' is again selected in the list), and you can continue editing the page.

Rename, copy, move, or delete a page

To rename, copy, move or delete a page, use the Page menu. All four options are available for pages that are offline. Pages that are live can only be copied. If you want to rename, remove or delete a page that is live, you first have to take it offline.

Rename

In the Rename dialog you can change the page's name and its URL name. Beware that changing the URL name of a page will change its URL. If visitors have bookmarked the old URL of the document, their bookmark will no longer work.

Copy

In the Copy dialog, specify a name and select a target parent folder for the copied page.

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Limitation

The folder that you select must be a folder that contains pages (rather than documents), like the current folder and its subfolders

Move

In the Move dialog, select the folder where the page is to be moved to.

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Limitation

The target folder must be a folder that contains pages (rather than documents), like the current folder and its subfolders

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Limitation

Beware that moving a page is likely to change its URL. If visitors have bookmarked the old URL of the document, their bookmark will no longer work.

Delete

The Delete dialog will warn you if the page you're about to delete is referred to from documents or from the content of other experience pages. Make sure you remove or redirect these references before deleting the document. Click Delete to confirm the deletion of the document.

Publish a page or take it offline

Experience pages have the same workflow as documents: 

• Editors and webmasters can publish them or take them offline directly, or schedule that for a later date.
• Authors can request those publication actions.

Depending on the state of the experience page, these options are available in the Page menu in the Channel editor.

Accept or reject requests

When an author has put in a publication request, this is indicated on the page's notification banner.

Editors can accept or reject that request. On accepting the request, the page is published. On rejecting the request, the editor can leave a message for the author explaining the reasons why they have rejected the changes. The author, in turn, can access that feedback. All through the page's Page menu:

Cancel request

A page with a pending publication request or a pending request to take offline is not editable. If additional changes are needed, the request can be cancelled by the author who submitted it. 

Cancel scheduled publication or scheduled take offline

When a page is scheduled to be published or taken offline, this is indicated on the page's notification banner.

Pages are not editable while they wait to be published or taken offline.

Run a page campaign

The page campaign feature enables you to schedule an alternative version of a page to be served on the live website from a specified start date and optionally until a specified end date.

To run a page campaign, open the version history of the page and select the version you want to use for the campaign. You may select an existing version or create a new one first.

Click on the clock icon:

A form will appear to schedule a page campaign using this version:

Optionally, enter a Version name.

Start date and time is mandatory. You can either enter the date and time in the textbox or click on the calendar icon to select a date and time from a picker:

Optionally, specify an End date and time to automatically end the campaign. If you do, the page will automatically revert to the (previously) published version on the live site.

If you don't specify an end date and time, the campaign will continue running until it is ended manually (see below) or until a new campaign for the same page starts.

Click on Schedule to schedule the campaign. You'll see the scheduled start and (if specified) end date and time displayed under the version:

At the specified start date and time, the page version will go live.

If you click on the clock icon again, you'll see the campaign details and an End now button:

Click on End now if you want to end the running campaign immediately.

When a page campaign ends (either because the End now button is clicked or because its End date and time is reached), the live page will revert to the "last published version", which is determined as follows:

• Choose the published version with the most recent start date.
• If there is no published version with a start date, choose the last published page.

If there are page campaigns with overlapping timelines, the campaign with the most recent Start date will become the published version.

To see all published versions of a page, check the Show published and scheduled versions only checkbox at the bottom of the Versions tab in the Page sidebar:

This will sort the published and scheduled versions in chronological order.

The channel preview in the Experience manager displays the current working version by default. To view the current live page, open the Page menu, select Info, and use the Site URL displayed at the top of the Page info popup.

Unlock a page

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Note

This function requires the Site Admin role.

While content on an Experience page is edited by a Content Author, the page is locked and other users can't make any changes to that page.

A page that is locked by another user will have a red warning at the top:

A Content Author may start editing but then get distracted and never either save or discard their changes. In such a case the page lock may block other users from doing their work.

Users with the Site Admin role can unlock a locked page by selecting the Unlock option in the Page menu: