How to properly delete a page

A relevant aspect of any piece of content is the livecycle, the process of creation, modification, using and finally deletion of that content. And although the deletion of any page in AEM sounds quite easy, there are quite a few aspects which need to be dealt with. For example:

• Create of a version of the page, so it can be restored.
• Update the MSM structures (if required)
• De-activate the page from publishing.
• Create an entry in the audit.log

All this happens when you use one of the pagemanager.delete() function to remove the page. If you are not using it, the most obvious problem you’ll face afterwards is the fact, that you have published pages which you cannot delete anymore (because the page is missing on authoring), and you have to use a workaround for it.

So, please remember: The pagemanager might have overhead in many areas, but there is a reason for it to exist. Taking care of all these mentioned activities is one of it. So whenever you deal with pages (creating/moving/renaming/deleting), first check the pagemanager API before you start using the JCR or Sling API.