Page content type defaults to a specific value even though a different value was selected to create a page

Question

I am currently working on SharePoint Online. I noticed very strange behavior with Pages library today.

For a certain requirement, I created 4 content types (CT1, CT2, CT3, CT4) using Article page as Parent content type. I have added all these 4 content types to the default pages library. So when i want to create a new page, i simply click on new document button and select one of the content type (for example CT1). In the next step, SharePoint asks to provide the title of the page and select page layout. Then SharePoint creates the page.

Weird behavior is that when i edit properties of the page, the content type associated to the page is CT4 and not CT1 (which was selected). No matter what content type i choose to create the page, it defaults to CT4 and not the selected one.

Once i edit the properties of the page, I can change the content type from CT4 to the previously selected one. But the page is always created using CT4 content type for some reason.

Note : CT2 is the default content type for that page library (Not CT4).

Not sure what is causing this behavior.

Please suggest.

Answer 1

Publishing pages are different from any other sort of content in SharePoint. When you create a Publishing Page with a content type, what you're really doing is creating a page with a Page Layout, which then infers the content type.

I suspect your custom content types do not have custom page layouts pointing back to them. To fix this you'll need to create them, even if they're just copies of OOB page layouts, and set the associated content type to the correct one.