update page templates with new site columns in MOSS publishing site

Question

I have created a feature, a publishing site, in Visual Studio to MOSS - this feature contains a masterpage, some pages, some site columns (grouped to match each page) etc. I have also created a site collection, some sites and pages based on my template.

Now I need to update some of my page templates and make the changes affect the existing pages - if I change the HTML of the template and updates my feature the changes immediately gets visible on the pages. But if I add a new site column to my page template this does not show in new nor existing pages - but it does in new site collections and sites.

What can I do to get my existing pages updated with the new site columns?

Answer 1

Try the below steps

1. Delete the page Instance from the Pages Library
2. Delete the Page Layout from the Master Page Gallery
3. Reactivate the feature of the Page Layout with force attribute (In the existing sites)
4. Make sure that you delete all the pages, before reactivate the pages in case if you have used the AllUserWebPart Tag in the Page Layout.

Answer 2

After you've verified that the custom page layouts have been published; try the following:

Navigate to http://{YourTopLevelSite}/_Layouts/AreaTemplateSettings.aspx

Within the "Page Layouts" section of the page, you'll find a checkbox labeled: "Reset all subsites to inherit these preferred page layout settings"; check it, and hit "Ok"