Reducing amount of clicks to create Publishing Page in SharePoint 2007

Question

I have a customer who is using the MOSS 2007 WCM Publishing Site.

To create a page in this environment you need to:

• Select Site Settings | Create Page
• Fill in:
  
  • Title
  • page url
  • select a page layout
• Click Add
• Enter content
• Click Submit for Approval

Has anyone done anything around this flow to create a page:

• Click Create Page (automatically knows what Page Layout to pick and hides these options)
• Fill in:
  • Title
  • Page URL
• Click Add
• Enter Content
• Click Submit for Approval

Upload Images Also a reduced amount of clicks for uploading an image to a page field e.g. click browse straight from page layout, select image off local file system and it is uploaded into Site Collection Images and automatically set as page field url.

Answer 1

One option is to restrict the number of page layouts that can be used when creating new pages in a certain site. By restricting this number to one you are essentially fixing the layout to a particular type. The page layout will still be visible to a user when the are creating a page, but they can't change to another - hence reducing the number of clicks.

To do this, go to site settings, and under the Look and Feel section click the Page layouts and site templates link. From the following page you can choose which page layouts are available when creating a new page.

Answer 2

My approach to this is to use list-based content instead. (Turn the paradigm on it's side, at least!) This way, you get full content management features for each item, and you can have a single page which "publishes" everything. This page just has a DVWP (or two or three) which makes it totally dynamic. By passing the key info on the Query String to the page, you have "bookmarkable" pages, too.