Bind custom content type to Pages library

Question

I have developed a custom content type and a custom page layout that is inheritted, in visual studio for my publishing site. I am setting the default page layout of the site programmatically, in event receiver(feature activated).But do i need to bind my custom content type to Pages library? If i should, then how to achieve this? Is ContentTypeBinding suitable for my situation. Or is it used only in site definitions?

<ContentTypeBinding
ContentTypeId="Text"
ListUrl="Text" 
RootWebOnly="TRUE" | "FALSE"/>

Answer 1

As soon as you are using the Page Layouts just for what they're intended to (that is, assigning it to a new page), I think it's not necessary to explicitly add the content type to the Pages Library.

Just by adding the Page Layout to the "_catalogs/masterpage" folder as "GhostableInLibrary", and associated with the needed content type, will make them available when you create a new page.

Example:

<Module Name="PageLayouts" Url="_catalogs/masterpage" RootWebOnly="TRUE">
    <File Path="PageLayouts\MyPageLayout.aspx" Url="MyPageLayout.aspx" Type="GhostableInLibrary">
        <Property Name="Title" Value="My Page Layout" />
        <Property Name="PublishingAssociatedContentType" Value=";#Welcome Page;#0x010100C568DB52D9D0A14D9B2FDCC96666E9F2007948130EC3DB064584E219954237AF390064DEA0F50FC8C147B0B6EA0636C4A7D4;#" />
        <Property Name="ContentType" Value="$Resources:cmscore,contenttype_pagelayout_name;" />
    </File>
</Module>

If, for another reason, you need the content type to be available on the Pages library, you can attach it programmatically in the same "FeatureActivated" event receiver, following a guideline such as the one provided in MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa543576.aspx