You've built your dynamic templates. Now let's put those pages on the web. That takes two things. A page type sets the web address for each page, and publishing turns a record into a live page. Like everything in this section, both need a Dynamic CMS package on your account.
A page type sets where an object's dynamic pages are hosted and how their URLs are built. Every page type you create also adds its own section to the Pages tab on that object's records.
You can use page types in two ways. You can keep one page type and create several dynamic templates for it. Picture a vet clinic with a page for every pet. Dogs and birds need different information, so you make a dog template and a bird template, and every pet keeps the same style of address. Or you can create separate page types, each with its own URL structure and design, like one for lessons and another for videos.
To create one, hover over Pages in the top navigation, click Settings, then Page types, and click New Page type. Choose the object to pull data from and give the page type a name. That name shows up on the record's Pages tab.
Under Hosting, choose your own domain or a temporary domain. A temporary domain is one of Ontraport's, for when you don't have a domain of your own. To use your own domain, connect it to Ontraport first. Standard Ontraport pages can also go on WordPress through the Ontrapages plugin, but dynamic pages can't. They're always hosted by Ontraport.
Next comes the URL structure. Every record gets its own page, so every page needs its own address. Add merge fields to the path, and Ontraport fills them in from each record. A blog might use your domain, slash blog, slash the post's title. A members area might use each record's Unique ID. URL preview shows you the result. URLs can't contain spaces, but merge fields sometimes add them, so under Replace invalid characters, pick a character to use instead, like a dash.
You can also drill up through relationships and use fields from a parent object's records in the URL. For example, a travel blog could put the country and state from parent records into each city page's address.
The last three settings handle publishing. "Create and publish pages for all existing records now" does exactly that. "Create and publish pages for new records automatically?" publishes a page every time a record is created. And "Select a default dynamic template" picks the design for those pages. These options stay grayed out until the object has a dynamic template. If that happens, save the page type, create a template, then come back and edit it.
Automatic publishing suits pages every record needs, like a page for every pet. For content you want to review first, like a new course or blog post, leave it off and publish by hand.
Need new addresses later? Edit the page type, click Save, and confirm with Change URLs. That updates the URL of every page published with that page type at once.
There's one limit to keep in mind. Multiply the number of page types on an object by five, then add the number of fields on that object. Keep the total under 1,000, or you may see poor performance and unexpected behavior. Ontraport support can tell you how many fields an object has.
On each record, the Pages tab has a section for every page type. There you pick the template from a dropdown, turn publishing on or off, click the URL to visit the live page, and see how many visits it's had. Publishing here, one record at a time, is a good way to review content before it goes live.
You can also publish from the dynamic template itself. Click Publish, select your page type, turn on either publishing toggle, and click Publish again. Be careful using this for public pages. If the information is private or sensitive, protect it before you publish.
To publish lots of records at once, use a group action. In the object's collection, select your records and click Change field. Set the page type's template field to your template, set its published field to On, and click Change Field.
Or publish from an automation. Hover over the object and click Automations. Where you want the page to go live, add an Update action that sets the template field, then another that turns the published field on, and publish the map. Use triggers and goals to publish on a schedule or after an important action, like a deal's status changing. Since the template is just a field, an automation can switch designs, too. When a pet's type is set to Dog, for example, an Update action can switch it to the dog template.
If you need faster dynamic pages, there's an optional high-performance caching server. It serves a saved copy of pages that don't need fresh data every time they're viewed, and cached records don't count toward your records displayed. To add it, click your profile icon, then Account, and change your Dynamic CMS plan.
So: a page type sets the domain and URL structure for an object's dynamic pages. Then you can publish them all at once, automatically for new records, by hand from the Pages tab, with a group action, or from an automation. Next up, we'll make sure private information stays private, in privacy and data security.