A superpage is a group of pages that are treated as one entity for some purpose. In the context of a wiki, a superpage is usually displayed as a single entry/entity on an IndexingScheme such as RecentChanges.
Page grouping is distinct from categorization as it is, in many respects, arbitrary and transient: a matter of presentation rather than content. Indeed, a superpage only arises as a concept because of the unification of page with name with single block of text with a single entry on an IndexingScheme.
A superpage can be used to preserve GlobalResources. Many pages contain essentially arbitrary material grouped, again, solely for presentation, such as a log, project or diary. Transforming this implicit presentational grouping into an explicit one clarifies the intention, and allows newer and better interfaces to be applied globally to all such groupings.
Organization of the PageDatabase can also be improved with SuperPages, a la folders in the file system. Groups of pages that are semantically related to each other can be moved from one wiki to another with a single operator if they are just one SuperPage. Or, for complex templated workflows that span several template pages, a SuperPage can be used to group the template pages together as a package that can be deployed as a single unit.
Several technologies exist for creating superpages:
- The established contender is to create SubPages rather than regular pages; these are grouped as a namespace and enjoy a greater range of presentation technologies, but do not have first-class status, which may be a limitation.
- PageClusters allow the addition of superpage-membership metadata to existing pages; this has no effect on the namespace.
- A combination of PageAliases and SectionedPages could create a similar effect to SubPages, but with more control over presentation, and with named subsections in the global namespace.