If I have a field in a base template in Sitecore, can I vary its Title depending on which page template is inheriting it?

Question

In Sitecore, I have a field which is re-used by several page templates. I use basepage inheritance, partly so I don't have to configure the source, help-text and so on each time it is used.

However there are times when the field has a slightly different meaning for one particular page template, and I would like to adjust the Title and help text accordingly to make it easier for the content editors.

Can anyone suggest a good way of doing this in Sitecore? Or is the solution just to make another copy of the field and edit that accordingly, especially as that's only a few seconds work.

Update: Thanks for the answers, I agree with all of them. The difference in the purpose of the fields was so subtle that I didn't think it warranted different fields, but I guess that's a kind of micro-optimisation that will just end up confusing everyone anyway, and certainly isn't worth developing a whole UI / datastore just for this purpose.

Answer 1

As everyone has stated, you need different field for different page templates. I would do the following, create a new template which contains your common field, and make page templates that use this field with same 'meaning' inherits the new template. And for page templates that use this field with different meaning, add a separate field to each template.

Answer 2

Depending on how many templates you have it may be worth taking that field out of the base template and create two separate templates for these fields.

Essentially will probably have the same field name but with a different help text and title.

Then just inherit the one you want.

This way you keep it separate and this makes better sense being separated as mentioned above.

If you have loads of template already using it then maybe a quick script to swap these over before applying the new template to help change existing ones over (only if you have lots of templates using this base template already)

Hopefully I've made sense here.

Answer 3

Good question, and one that most Sitecore people arrive at eventually. That fact is that the help text is part of the field item. So if you want different help text, you need a different field.

As you point out, the fields sometimes have a different meaning. This is an indicator that it should in fact be a different field.

Answer 4

If this is not a field that is different on every page, I would keep the inherited field, whether or not it is used by the current page, and create a new one to suit the changed purpose. If the field does have a different meaning on every page, then I would remove it from the base template and re-make it for each page template.

If you have this field on your base page template and it is used on most pages, you will want to ensure that you are still able to use it on the other pages that need it, even if there are one or two exceptions where it does not apply. However, if the purpose of this field changes on every page, then it is better architecture to create a separate field on each page.

It is best practice to use each field for a defined, uniform job; you should not be re-purposing fields between items, as it will lead to confusion for both developers and content editors.

Answer 5

My suspicion is that you're probably better defining the field more than once.

It may well be possible to modify how Sitecore generates the editing controls shown in Content Editor so that your field's title varies. But that implies you need to store some configuration somewhere to say "when should it change" and "what should it change to". And that's likely to take some time to set up. Plus I think that might be confusing to future developers on the project as it's unexpected behaviour for a field to change it's appearance in different places?

So I'd argue that multiple definitions of the field will be easier for other developers to understand, and probably less prone to mistakes.