What are Application Pages, Site Pages?

Application pages are used to support application implementations in SharePoint Foundation. Application pages are stored on the file system of the front-end Web server in the %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS directory and exist for every site in a Web application. This folder is mapped to an IIS virtual directory called "_layouts". Every site and subsite will have access to the application pages by using the _layouts virtual directory. For example, http://myserver/_layouts/settings.aspx and http://myserver/subsite/_layouts/settings.aspx access the same application page on the front-end Web server unlike site pages, which are an instance for the specified site. Custom Application Pages can be created as can be stored in sub folders within the _layouts folder. No server side coding is allowed on these pages.

Site Pages are the page that are created, edited and customized by the users of the site. They are stored within the content database of the site and retrieved whenever requested by the user. Site Pages can be of two types which are as follows:
  • Web Part Pages: Web Part Pages do contain custom web parts within the web part zones
  • Standard Pages: Standard Pages contain images, content etc.
Server side coding can be embedded within the page but for that the user needs to add an entry to the web.config file of the site under the tag <PageParserPath>.



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