This section covers the differences in metadata and files for virtual pages compared to the regular metadata syntax.

Page filename

The only difference compared to regular pages is virtual page files should use a .txt extension rather than a .md extension.

Main metadata

The first difference to the regular syntax is instead of using --- to enclose the metadata block we wrap the metadata in a single HTML comment. This is to exclude the file from being parsed like normal by Jekyll.

Example metadata

<!--
title: Example Virtual Page
permalink: /Example_Root_Page/?/Example_Virtual_Page/
tags: [Missions, Guides]
-->

Apart from the permalink value the way other values are formatted remain the same as the regular syntax.

For the permalink value virtual pages require a ‘real’ page as the first level root of the path. A ‘real’ page is any Jekyll-based page (ie: the kind of page explained in all the other regular Meta guides).

Then the virtual page path is appended to the end of the permalink path with a ?/.

So in the above example:

• /Example_Root_Page/ is the part of the path that represents the path of a ‘real’ root page.
• ?/Example_Virtual_Page/ represents the virtual page. Any deeper paths desired like ?/Example_Virtual_Page/Another_Page/ should still use just a single ?/.

Tip: live examples of multi-level virtual pages can be found in the Entity Reference section, including deeper multi-level paths such as TppCollectionLocatorArray.

Page content

After the metadata block you can add the page content that will be visible. Virtual pages differ in various syntax to the regular formatting so check out the virtual page formatting reference for details.

Directory structure of the wiki

Directory structure for virtual page text files themselves is the same as the outlined on the Creating a Section page.

Pointing the wiki to a new virtual page root path

The way the virtual pages are detected by the wiki is two-fold:

• The permalink path of the ‘real’ page used as the basis is defined as a custom variable in the _config.yml file.
• The physical directory path to the virtual pages directory, defined in the build-virtual-index.ps1 Powershell script used to generate an Javascript index all virtual pages.

Defining a root page variable

1. Navigate to the root of the site’s files and open _config.yml in a text editor.
2. Scroll to the virtual_page_roots array and add the path to the real root page that the virtual pages section will use as the basis, like the following:

   virtual_page_roots:
   - '/Entity_Reference/'
   - '/Another_Example_Real_Page/'
   

Defining a root directory for the virtual page files

1. In the root of the site open build-virtual-index.ps1 in a text editor.
2. In the $rootDirs array add the path to the directory that contains the virtual page .txt files, like so:

   $rootDirs = [System.Collections.ArrayList]@(
    "wiki/Entity_Reference/"
    "wiki/Another_Example_Real_Page/"
   )
   

   Note: no comma is needed to be added between path values in the Powershell array.

As per the usual advice on adding a directory for sections the base directory for the virtual pages should use the name as the ‘real’ page used for the root (in the above examples that’s Another_Example_Real_Page).

Images/other files

Images and other files can be added to the assets directory as per the regular overview.

Page redirections

Page redirections aren’t supported on virtual pages.