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Looking at implementing XPM for with our next 20103 SP1 - DD4T project and having zero experience with it I had a question regarding DCPs.

In general, is XPM better suited to working with static Component Presentations on a Page rather than Dynamic Component Presentations which don't require a page at all?

For example, we'll have class news listing and I am considering rolling with single listings page (dynamically retrieving publishing News Components) and a single detail page that can be passed a component Id via the Url to display a full News story.

Is it possible for an Editor to create a new News Component and edit it in XPM even though there's ultimately no new Page being created?

I took a quick look at Publication Content Types but the settings include a default insert position on Page which isn't relevant.

I happy to go back to a static model if this makes working XPM easier - in terms of setup for us and use for our Editors.

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XPM is suited to work with SDL Tridion and all types of Components. One requirement always is that there is a Page, but it works very well on portal type websites too where you might only use Dynamic Component Presentations.

The trick for that is to use a so called Dummy Page, you just create a single Page in SDL Tridion, and use its TCMURI when writing out the Page Settings XPM comment in your page. If your Component Presentations are correctly marked as IsRepositoryPublished and IsQueryBased, then all will work as normal.

The only thing I can see as a possible source of inconvenience is how these DCPs will appear in the right location. When you have Pages with embedded Component Presentations, in XPM it is clear that you can add a new Component Presentation to the Page, or move them around on the Page. But other than that there is no need for you to switch the model which you have been using. You should always choose the model that suits your scenario best, and that should not mean you have to change it for XPM.

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  • Thanks Bart. So if have other dynamic types with there own layouts, we'd need a dummy page for each to maintain the experience for editors?
    – Neil
    Commented May 20, 2014 at 10:40
  • @Neil with dynamic types the Page doesn't matter, so you can reuse a single Dummy Page as much as you like.
    – Bart Koopman
    Commented May 20, 2014 at 12:58

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