The Web Part Page is the primary page for presenting web parts, libraries, and lists. If you have a need for unstructured content such as text and images, you should plan to use a wiki page, which you will learn about later in this chapter.

Web part pages organize content through web part zones. A web part zone is a predefined area for adding web parts. You can create web part pages using the browser or with SharePoint Designer.

As you can see in Figure 3-3, web parts sit in web part zones that are part of a page template known in SharePoint as the master page. You will learn more about Master Pages in detail later in this chapter.

Figure 3.3. Figure 3-3

Users with appropriate permissions can create new pages and add, configure, or remove web parts through the web interface. You may ask why you would need to create a new Web Part Page in SharePoint Designer instead of the browser. With SharePoint Designer, you can do much more than you can through the browser. You can customize the content areas or create custom web parts called Data View Web Parts, which are covered in Chapter 8, "XSLT Data Views and Forms."

Wiki pages are a specialized version of the standard Web Part page and incorporate the wiki concept, which is collaborative and "living" because it continually changes through input from multiple users. Like Web Part pages, wiki pages have several pre-defined layouts, with different zone patterns. Unlike Web Part pages, these wiki content zones allow both rich text and web parts to be freely intermingled. Figure 3-4 illustrates the freeform layout of a wiki page. You can add web parts, images, and text directly to the rich content area or wiki field.

Figure 3.4. Figure 3-4

If you have worked with previous versions of SharePoint, you may be pleasantly surprised when you create your first collaboration site in SharePoint 2010. Instead of the boxy, data-driven presentation that was standard in team sites, you will be working with a new type of page, the Wiki Page. MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0 had a separate site type called a wiki. SharePoint 2010 removes Wiki as a site type but incorporates much-enhanced wiki functionality directly in the standard team site template.

Seen below in Figure 3-5 is the Welcome Page, a wiki page used as the home page of a team site.

Because Microsoft understood that there was a need for unstructured collaboration, you can make the Welcome Page the home page of any site template in SharePoint. You can activate this feature in the Site Features section of the Site Settings page.

Although you can create additional Wiki libraries with any name, by default, SharePoint 2010 team sites create one called Site Pages. (Yes, it can easily be confused with the generic idea of "site pages" described earlier in the chapter. The builders of SharePoint have a penchant for using general terms to name specific objects....) You can find these site pages in SharePoint Designer under the Site Objects menu, as shown in Figure 3-6.

Figure 3.5. Figure 3-5

Figure 3.6. Figure 3-6

In the root of each list and library is the Forms folder. In this folder is a collection of pages used for entering and displaying the information in that list. These pages are called view pages, yet they are also web part pages.

End users can create view pages through the web interface, but unlike the generic web part pages mentioned earlier, view pages are both edited and created in SharePoint Designer.

Figure 3-7 shows a list view page for a Shared Documents Library as seen in the browser.

Figure 3.7. Figure 3-7

View pages typically contain HTML controls to display or edit a list item. For more information about creating a view page, see Chapter 8, "XSLT Data Views and Forms."

By default, most SharePoint content pages, regardless of type, are based upon the "sacred original" site definition file plus instance information pulled from the content database. When you edit such a page in SharePoint Designer and save it, the link to its site definition file is broken. A copy of the site definition file is merged with its instance information and the result is then stored in the content database. Such a page is called a customized page.

Figure 3.8. Figure 3-8

When this happens, SharePoint gives you the warning shown in Figure 3-8 before breaking the link.

You can restore the link to the site definition file by right-clicking the page in SharePoint Designer and selecting "Reset to Site Definition" from the context menu. This will re-establish the link, but it will also leave any content you have added to web part or content zones within the page intact. Additionally, the customized file is renamed and stored in the same folder for backup reasons.

v4.master, shown in Figure 3-10, is the default master page for most non-publishing sites in SharePoint 2010. It is also the default system master page in both SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint Server.

Figure 3.10. Figure 3-10

The default.master page in SharePoint 2010 should look familiar to you if you worked with SharePoint 2007. Both visually and in the code, this master page looks like the default.master page seen in collaboration sites in SharePoint 2007, the previous version of SharePoint. Use this master page if you are using or require a legacy (2007) interface for your site and you will not be using the ribbon.

The inclusion of this master page in SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint Server ensures that upgrading from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 is an easy process. It is automatically used when you upgrade a SharePoint 2007 site to SharePoint 2010. Although it does not include the ribbon, you could add the ribbon and other SharePoint 2010 user interface content placeholders.

As shown in Figure 3-11, when default.master is applied to a SharePoint 2010 team site, the look and feel transforms to the familiar "baby blue" branding of SharePoint 2007.

Figure 3.11. Figure 3-11

The minimal.master page is best suited for pages with minimal branding and navigation. The minimal.master is used with search pages and Office web applications. Because this master page does not include the ribbon or navigation, you should use it for pages that require a lot of real estate.

Figure 3-12 shows a search page with minimal.master applied.

Figure 3.12. Figure 3-12

simple.master is the master page used for error and login pages. It lives in the file system and is not available in the master page gallery. If you are creating a custom login or error page, you will want to use the simple.master page. Figure 3-13 shows an error page with simple.master applied.

Figure 3.13. Figure 3-13

The MWSDefaultv4.master is found in the master page gallery of meeting workspace sites. It is almost identical to the v4.master with the exception of a couple of content placeholders such as the MeetingNavigator, shown in the left navigation area in Figure 3-14.

The nightandday.master page, seen below in Figure 3-15, is only available in SharePoint Server 2010. It contains controls specialized for publishing web content management. You learn more about this master page in Chapter 4.

Figure 3.14. Figure 3-14

As previously mentioned, a master page must have all of the required content placeholders in the code, even if you are not going to use them. The following table lists the required placeholders, their placement in the document flow, and their descriptions:

Some of the required placeholders may not be necessary for your design, so what do you do with them? Hide them! Include them inside an <asp:Panel> control you add to the page and set the control's Visible attribute to False as shown in the following code snippet. Since the <asp:Panel> control is not visible, the ContentPlaceHolder controls within it and their corresponding Content controls will not be rendered to the browser.

<!--Hidden Placeholders -->
<asp:Panel visible="false" runat="server">
<!-- Top Nav -->
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderHorizontalNav" runat="server"/>
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderTopNavBar" runat="server"/>
<!-- Left Nav -->
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderQuickLaunchTop" runat="server"/>
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderQuickLaunchBottom" runat="server"/>
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderLeftNavBarDataSource" runat="server" />
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderCalendarNavigator" runat ="server" />
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderLeftNavBarTop" runat="server" />
<!-- For adding CSS to child pages -->
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderBodyAreaClass" runat ="server"/>
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderTitleAreaClass" runat ="server"/>

<!-- Required for Legacy UI -->
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderSiteName" runat="server"/>
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="PlaceHolderPageImage" runat="server"/>
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="PlaceHolderTitleLeftBorder" runat="server"/>
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderMiniConsole" runat="server"/>
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderTitleRightMargin" runat="server"/>
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="PlaceHolderTitleAreaSeparator" runat="server"/>
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="PlaceHolderNavSpacer" runat="server"/>
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderLeftNavBarBorder" runat="server"/>
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="PlaceHolderBodyLeftBorder" runat="server"/>
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderBodyRightMargin" runat="server" />

</asp:Panel>

There are several required controls for a SharePoint master page to function. When you create a custom master page or are troubleshooting any errors with a modified master page, make sure that these controls are in place.