A page layout is a template used when creating new content pages in SharePoint. There are a number of page layouts included with SharePoint out of the box. When one of those doesn't suffice, we can easily create our own. In this recipe, we will modify the BlankWebPartPage.aspx page layout to have three columns, each with a web part zone. A web part zone is an area of the page where users can add web parts. A
web part is an ASP.NET user control under the covers.
Follow these steps to create a page layout with three columns of web part zones:
Open SharePoint Designer.
Select Open Site. Enter the complete URL to the SharePoint site and select Open.
From the Navigation pane, select Page Layouts.
In the list of files in the Page Layouts library, make a copy of
BlankWebPartPage.aspx(for our example, we have renamed itPageLayout_ThreeColumn.aspx).