Nested Master Pages

Need for nesting the master page

The master pages designed so far have a single layout used across the entire website. However, many large websites have a layout that is customized across various sections.

For example, a health care application may need three types of web pages: a Staff Member Specific page, a Patient Specific Page, and a Billing Specific Page. All these pages share a common layout, such as header and footer, but each page might require some customization on top of the generic layout.

Example of nested pages in design view:

Designing nested master pages

It is possible to customize pages using nested master pages. For our example in the previous section, three nested pages, one for each type of web page, would be needed.

By using nested master pages, the site-wide layout information is maintained in one file (the top-level master page) while content specific to particular regions is separated out into different files. There are three entities involved here: Main Master Page, Nested Master Page and “Default.apsx”. These three entities are shown in the image below: