Dear Seth, Amilkar
You can specifiy the Master page in the Web.config file with no problem
However, there is no way to get the page loaded without the
ContentPlaceholder
That's where the content of the individual pages is placed. Without the
ContentPlaceholder in each page, there is no content on each page.
Thank you Seth for pointing out my mistake about the option to specify
the master page file in web.config (it can be included as an attribute
in the <pages> tag). It may be a lack of experience (or imagination)
on my part but I cannot see any advantage in doing it that way and VS
2005 designer doesn't seem to support it.
It isn't quite true however that Content pages must have content place
holders in order for the page to be rendered. The rules are a bit more
complex than that and with good reason.
Master pages must have at least one content placeholder. That makes
sense otherwise it might as well be an ordinary page.
Content placeholders in Master pages can be non-empty. Anything placed
in them acts as default content for dependent pages.
Content placeholders in Content pages are optional. When they are
absent they are replaced with default content from the Master page. If
they are present then they overwrite any default content from the
Master page (which means that all default content is removed even if
the local placeholder is empty).
What this adds up to is that, conceivably, a Content page can have no
placeholders and will render the Master page with default content
only. It makes no sense however to have more than one Content page
like this.
