Ghosting/Unghosting - Share Point 2010

As you’ve seen, two main page types are featured in SharePoint: application pages that are rendered from the file system, and content pages that are usually rendered from the database. However, pages are often rendered using a number of additional files such as master pages or page templates. Some of these components, while mounted in document libraries, are actually being loaded from the local file system. When changes are made to these files using SharePoint Designer, the changed page content is stored within the content database. As a result, all future renderings of the page will be retrieved from the content database. Site pages that are loaded from the file system are known as ghosted pages, and when these pages have been customized they are known as unghosted pages. With each new version of SharePoint comes another set of terms for this phenomenon.SharePoint 2003 brought us ghosting/unghosting; SharePoint 2007 scrapped these terms in favor of the more descriptive uncustomized/customized. Now with SharePoint 2010, the terms attached and detached are used to prevent any ambiguity. In most SharePoint documentation, the terms ghosted/unghosted are still in use, however.

In SharePoint 2010, a few new tools enable administrators and developers to better manage ghosted/unghosted pages. When editing pages, SharePoint Designer now loads the page content in safe mode by default. In this mode, parts of the page that are loaded from the file system are highlighted and can’t be edited. To make changes to these regions, you must work in Advanced mode.From an administrative point of view, it is now possible to disable the ability for users to enter Advanced mode in SharePoint Designer and therefore prevent pages from being unghosted.