Cross site publishing working with Catalog Item page

Question

We have been using the cross site publishing features of SP 2013 (on prem) for about two years now. We have reviewed many tutorials and blog posts on the subject:

This one from Microsoft employee Bela Engen and this series of technet articles. Also taken the the course on Lynda.com and dozens of other blog posts which mostly just copy these.

None of them really say anything about how to work with the catalog item page. They say, "Here it is, it doesn't look pretty, but the information is there." And then, if it even comes up at all they page has been mysteriously transformed into something amazing.

I did find this page on the markup of catalog item pages, But it doesn't say how to customize the display or add any logic such as "Convert these minutes into days/hours." or "If this content type is x then do y."

Does anyone know how to work with the content on a catalog item page?

Any good tutorials on how to make a catalog item page look good?

Or is there a way that the pagelayout can just supply all the managed properties and I can use regular tools like jquery, css and html to lay it out?

We don't have access to central admin or powershell. We do have SharePoint designer and html/css/javascript skills.

Answer 1

I am working through the whole product catalog stuff myself right now. I haven't gotten to the point of customising the catalog item page yet. Based on my understanding you would want to create a master page which you then apply to the item page that was created.

You can create SharePoint 2013 master pages using HTML & CSS and then upload the HTML file along with supporting files (i.e. CSS files) to the Master Page gallery which will convert the page into a SharePoint Master Page, adding all its extra bits of code. Then to make changes you modify the HTML file. Each time you upload it the rest is created automatically by SP.

I've been working my way through a tutorial and the part on Master Pages that may be of help is: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/tothesharepoint/2013/03/27/stage-6-upload-and-apply-a-new-master-page-to-a-publishing-site/ (which I realize is the stage after the link you provided).

Check out yoursite/_catalogs/masterpage/Forms/AllItems.aspx

I know that when I was doing some test master pages a while back I was doing it all using NotePad++ as my HTML editor and SharePoint designer (and/or the link above) for adding my Master Pages. You need to make sure everything is published, including any supporting files (i.e. CSS files).

A starter master page was created by someone which might give you a starting point as it includes the .HTML file, etc along with the documentation: http://startermasterpages.codeplex.com/