Page Types

The SharePoint presentation layer is delivered using a virtual path provider that forwards requests to the SharePoint server object model for processing. As part of the processing pipeline, content is either retrieved from an appropriate database or loaded from disk. Often, the final output is a combination of the two. Bearing this processing model in mind, we can broadly group the content delivered by the SharePoint presentation layer into two groups: application pages and site pages.

Application Pages

Application pages are loaded from disk and usually provide common user interface functionality such as site administration and configuration tools. Application pages can be found in the file system at %SPRoot%\Template\Layouts. To facilitate the sharing of application pages among sites, this folder is mounted on every web site as http://<web site url>/_layouts.