Deploying site pages in SharePoint

Question

Hi,

I have around 9 web parts and 3 pages to be deployed. Each page will be having 3 webparts. From a deploymnet perspective, i think i have the following two options:

1. Deploy the pages using a feature. The pages will have webparts present.
2. Create a custom site definition with a document library and have the three pages as part of the document library.

Can you please let me know which one of the options is better or is there any better solution?.

Please note that the solution needs to work on WSS 3.0 as well.

Answer 1

First you need to deploy the webparts using WSP. Once it populated in webpart gallery you can copy the pages from page library and can paste in production.

Answer 2

I would code the whole thing as a feature. You can staple it to the site definition for the site type you want it activated on.

If ever you need to migrate to the next version of SharePoint or another server it is easier to not have any custom site definitions. Also, the features leaves the site in a normal out-of-the box state; if you ever remove the feature nothing breaks.

Also, unlike the site definition it will also allow you to run it on sites that where created in the past.