What is the recommended approach to update page layout

Question

I have an intranet publishing portal with web-templates and custom page layout. I get requirement to update page layouts and the way I have been pushing any changes to page layout is

1. Updating elements manifest file to include "ReplaceContent=True"
2. Write a feature upgrade and ensure the page layout is included Run the feature
3. upgrade across the farm so that all sites using this page layout will effectively have the new page layout.

Below is the manifest file for reference.

This approach has been working for me till now. However, I am not sure if this ReplaceContent tag causes any issue with Ghosting since I am seeing a lot new pages going as UnGhosted.

Is there any best practise I can refer as to how we can upgrade the page layouts so the existing pages using that layout also see changes without any side-effects?

Cheers, Sharath

Answer 1

First of all what ghosted and unghosted means:

• Ghosted == Un-Customized
• Unghosted == Customized

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michael_yeager/archive/2007/11/03/sharepoint-terms-ghosted-unghosted-and-reghosted.aspx

And this might be solution to your problem:

There is one case when an untouched layout will not get updated through deployment: when the page layout inherits a content type that is instantiated in the site – more precisely when the columns of the content type are visible, editable and have been filled with data on the page instance(s).

In this case, the page layout will appear as unghosted after a page instance has been created and it will not get updated at deployment.

The solution is to reset the page layout to its site definition

http://madalina.blog.com/2012/01/updating-sharepoint-page-layouts-the-right-way/