How to Create a Custom Page Template with Dialog in Magnolia CMS

Creating custom page templates in Magnolia CMS is a core task for businesses seeking advanced CMS flexibility. Whether you are an enterprise or looking to hire Magnolia developers, understanding the fundamentals of Magnolia’s templating structure is crucial. This guide, created in collaboration with a top Magnolia development company, walks you through how to build a working page template with a dialog in Magnolia CMS 6.2.43, using the mgnl jumpstart setup. 

If you’re exploring Magnolia development services, this tutorial also serves as a great benchmark to evaluate developer expertise.

• Template definition 
• Dialog definition 
• i18n translation keys

Why Hire Magnolia CMS Developers for Custom Templating?

Before diving into the technical details, it’s important to understand why hiring Magnolia developers can be a game-changer.

Magnolia’s templating and dialog capabilities are robust but require precision and experience. A skilled Magnolia development company ensures your Magnolia CMS is optimized for performance, SEO, and user experience.

Benefits of Custom Page Templates in Magnolia CMS

When you create your custom page templates for Magnolia CMS from the ground up, you’re not just simplifying content creation, but laying the groundwork for SEO, performance, and scalability. The following are the most applicable benefits that business organizations and content teams receive when they have expert Magnolia developers or an experienced Magnolia development firm on board.

1. Full Design Flexibility

Custom templates allow you to make your site your way. Landing pages, product description pages, or multi-language blocks of content, whenever necessary – templates designed by developers provide design consistency with editor-managed content.

Tip: Use block-based designs to contain content types such as hero banners, SEO blocks, and CTAs.

2. Enhanced SEO Capabilities

With a custom page template, it is easy to add primary SEO fields—meta titles, descriptions, keywords, and canonical URLs—to the dialog. Then content editors will be able to optimize every single page without the help of developers.

When using Magnolia developers to design your templates, they will have the ability to implement best SEO practice into their coding from the very start so that your site will be search engine friendly right from day one.

3. Better Performance and Load Times

Custom templates eliminate dead code and get you to load only what you need. This avoids page loads and gets your Core Web Vitals scores that affect your Google ranking, improved.

A veteran Magnolia development firm can also optimize your templates to make cache strategies function better, cut down server load, and improve overall site performance.

4. Improved Editorial Workflow

Rather than having developers create each iteration of content, custom page templates empower your marketing and editorial teams. You can build templated dialogs that pre-suggest just what content editors must fill in, without writing code.

It all becomes a heck of a lot easier and eliminates content bottlenecks, an advantage multiplied many times over in business settings.

5. Consistent Branding Across the Website

Branding and visual consistency are made easier with custom templates. All pages built from a template will be branded according to your brand guidelines automatically, without any human touch. The consistency builds trust with users as well as a professional look and feel across all digital touchpoints.

6. Reusable and Scalable Architecture

Well-designed templates can be reused across various sections or microsites. For instance, if you are introducing a series of campaigns, you can introduce new pages within seconds with identical functionality. Such scalability is one of the primary reasons why many companies employ Magnolia developers for long-term Magnolia CMS development.

7. Easy Localization and i18n Support

Multinational companies are most suitably supported with custom templates. Custom templates support region-level content blocks, multilingual field-level content, and localized metadata. A company offering professional Magnolia development offers internationalization ease using i18n keys and language dialogs.

Step-by-Step Process to Create a Project and Custom Page Template with Dialog

• mgnl jumpstart -m 6.2.43 

• Choose a template: standard-webapps (Magnolia without any content) 

• Choose a template: magnolia-community-webapp

After selecting the value, the project will install and download the necessary packages for the project.

• mgnl start 
• Launch any web browser of your choice and go to the following address: http://localhost:8080/magnoliaAuthor/

• Username: superuser
• Password: superuser

File Structure:

Once the project is installed, launch your preferred code editor and set up the required folders and files as outlined below.

1. Page Template Definition:

Path: light-modules/magnolia/templates/pages/standardPage.yaml 

id: magnolia: pages/standardPage 
 title: Standard Page 
 dialog: magnolia: pages/standardPage 

2. Dialog Definition:

Path: light-modules/magnolia/dialogs/pages/standardPage.yaml 
label: StandardPage 
form: 
properties: 
  title: 
$type: textField 
label: Title 
i18n: true 
 
  navigationTitle: 
$type: textField 
label: Navigation title 
i18n: true 
 
  windowTitle: 
$type: textField 
label: Window title 
i18n: true 

 
  hideInNavigation: 
$type: checkBoxField 
defaultValue: false 
label: Hide Nav 
buttonLabel: Hide 
 
  keyword: 
$type: textField 
label: Keyword 
i18n: true 
rows: 3 
 
  Description Details: 
$type: textField 
label: Description Detail 
i18n: true 
rows: 5 
 
  metaTitle: 
$type: textField 
label: Meta title 
i18n: true 
 
layout: 
  $type: tabbedLayout 
  tabs: 

tabMain: 
   label: Main Title 
   fields: 

     – name: header 
     – name: navigationHeader 

     – name: windowHeader 
     – name: hideInNavigation 
tabSeo: 
   label: Metadata 
   fields: 
     – name: metaTitle 
     – name: keyword 
     – name: descriptionDetails 

3. i18n Translations for Labels

Path: light-modules/magnolia/i18n/messages_en.properties 
standardPage. label = Standard Page 
 standardPage.title.label=Title 
 standardPage.navigationTitle. label = Navigation title 
 standardPage.windowTitle. label = Window title 
 standardPage.hideInNavigation.label=Hide in navigation 
 standardPage.hideInNavigation.buttonLabel=Hide 
 standardPage.metaTitle.label=Meta title 
 standardPage.keywords.label=Keywords 
 standardPage.description. label = Description 
 standardPage.tabMain.label=Main tab 
 standardPage.tabSeo.label=Metadata

How to Check in a Browser

1. Add your module to the light-modules/ directory within your Magnolia project structure. 
2. Restart Magnolia using the mgnl start command. 
3. Go to Pages App, then Create New Page, and you will see Standard Page as an option. 
4. Use the dialog to enter metadata fields and save the page.