Guide 00 · Developer docs

Core dna for site builders

Read this guide first. Core dna is hosted, so there is nothing to install; your repository holds only templates and front-end assets; and a new kind of page starts in the admin, with a layout. In half a day, from what the platform is to a page you built, deployed and rendered in Smarty or Twig.

L0

Unit 03 of 05 6 pages

Your first page, end to end

Updated 23/10/2026 01:41

One page type built from nothing, in the order the platform needs: a placeholder template, a layout pointing at it, its areas, a published page, and the template that renders the areas in Smarty and Twig. Then the four checks for when a change does not show.

Do this once on the development environment, with a throwaway Article page type, before you build anything real. Every later confusion about why a template is not used traces back to one of these steps, so walk them in order rather than skipping to editing a template and reloading.

Start with a placeholder template sets out the whole path and deploys the file the layout will point at; the next three pages are in the admin; Render the areas in both engines brings it back to the repository. Bookmark Nothing changed: the four checks: you will need it in your first hour.

In this unit

Read in order

01 Start with a placeholder template The first page of a site, built in the order the platform needs, and its first step: a placeholder template at the path the layout will name, committed and deployed. Then what a wrong template path looks like in each engine. 02 Create the layout In the admin, under Customization › Layouts, add a layout for the template you deployed: its name, its template, and the controller that makes it a page layout. Each field of the form, the controllers you can choose from, and what to check when the layout does not appear where you expect. 03 Add the areas and their input types A layout's areas are the fields editors fill in. Give the article a heading, a body and an image, each with a name, an input type, a label and help for the editor. Why the name is the field to get right, what the other settings do, and what to do when no input type fits. 04 Create and publish a page Add a page under Content › Pages, choose the Article layout, fill in the fields your areas produced, and publish it. Then check it signed out, because a backend user sees unpublished pages that visitors get a 404 for. 05 Render the areas in both engines Replace the placeholder with markup that reads the areas: getAreaText() for plain text, getAreaHtml() for rich text, getAreaImage() for an image. The template in Smarty and in Twig, what each call returns when a field is empty or a name is wrong, and how to see the result. 06 Nothing changed: the four checks You changed something and the page looks the same. Four checks, in the order that finds the cause fastest: did you build, did you deploy, is it cached, and is the record published while you look signed out. Then what to check when all four pass.