Reusable Assets and Content

Most Web sites begin with the creation of a single HTML or scripting-based web page. The look and feel of the site is designed and site navigation is determined. Content, typically a mixture of text and graphics, is added last. As the site grows, this first page can be saved under a new name and essentially serve as a "template" for future web pages, all of which are connected.

This approach works well until you find yourself making a global change to the Web site, which could require individual edits to every page on the site. To do this, many large Web sites take a modular approach that uses dynamic includes and database-driven web pages. As a result, portions of content are assembled to display as a single web page when the web browser requests it. Thus, site navigation, advertisements, headers and footers, and information that changes frequently can be updated just once and take effect immediately. However, this requires a significant development effort and a lot of coordination.

Site Studio takes a similar approach, but it goes one step further by offering reusable layout and content. Some site assets, such as page templates, region templates, and placeholders, are used to provide background information ("look and feel") for a typical web page, while other assets, such as region definitions and element definitions, can modify and filter the layout and content, leaving much of the content of the page open for contributors to create and edit within the given page. Individual portions of the web page (both content and layout) can be made reusable, allowing those assets to be used and reused multiple times in the same way the page templates themselves are used and reused.