Change page to use a different underlying template?

Hi all,

On TeamSite 7.3.1

Does anyone know whether it is possible to modify a page to use a different template from the one it was using at creation time? For example, I have 2 different temples:

Standard Layout

Responsive Layout

and i want to modify a page built using Standard Layout to use Responsive Layout.

My understanding is that this is not possible within TeamSite.(7.3.x at any rate)

I think it is possible to use an editor to modify the referenced Template value to another template but this might just break the page and will probably result in all page content being lost/reset to the default.

It is my understanding that you have to recreate a page, using the new Template, and there is no easy way to 'translate' pages in this way.

Can anyone confirm or refute this? Many thanks!

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Comments

Pauliw

Hi,

Your understanding is correct.You have to re create the pages.

Thanks

Paul

Binettoid

Thanks Paul.

Garth McMillan

I'll just add that we did change a large number of pages to a different template, without recreating the pages, but there are some issues that might make it impractical for you. Basically, it's a whole bunch of find/replace and transforms.

I would only suggest it if the templates are relatively the same (ie. only a component or 2 different or in another place).

Things to look at:

Page

Relevant parts under /Page/PageTemplates element in the .page's need to be updated for the new template.

Components

/Page/Page_Content/Component[]/ContainerProperties/FixedLayoutArea/@ID need to be updated if the components need to move to another area on the template.
/Page/Page_Content/Component[]/ContainerProperties/FixedLayoutArea/@index needs to be changed if the order is important. NOTE: Index didn't need to be sequential, just lower number is first.
/Page/Page_Content/Component[]/@ID and /Page/Page_Content/Component[]/@Checksum should be made blank (I think both, but can't remember).

When I did it TeamSite was fairly forgiving, after the changes, when the page is opened to edit all the missing IDs are generated and the indexes are recreated. It was a while ago though, using TeamSite 7.3.2, so things might be different now - and I might've forgotten steps. I think the biggest issue was making sure the component/template versions matched.

Obviously, you should test this before destroying your site. If you've only got a small amount of pages to change, it's probably better to just create new pages. However, it did work for us (we've actually done it twice due to template changes).