Adobe CQ5's sidekick is empty (no components shown)

Question

I've added a paragraph system component in my template, trying to emulate the Geometrixx's contentPage. Everything is fine but I can't drag any components into the system because there are none to add. What can I be missing?

More information:

• My component page inherits from foundation's page. (primary type: cqComponent)
• My template page has that component as resource type. (primary type: cqTemplate)
• The page (primary type: cqPage), in its jcr:content node has the component as resource type, the template as cq:Template property, and has par as a child (whose type is foundation/components/parsys)
• Inside the jsp template there is this line:

<cq:include path="par" resourceType="foundation/components/parsys"/>

Answer 1

Each CQ5 template has a different set of components that can be defined to be available for use. This allows you to control what the authors will be allowed to use, and it makes it easier for them, because they will only see the relevant components, instead of the tons of components CQ5 offers.

When looking at a page, you can switch to something called the "design" mode (as opposed to the "edit" or "preview" modes where you spend most of your time authoring the page). This design mode allows to define the per-template specific settings. It is accessed through the yellow ruler icon on the very bottom of the sidekick.

When in design mode, click on the "Edit" button that is on the blue toolbar called "Design of par", there you'll be able to enable the components you want to be able to use.

When you'll be building components, keep in mind that the design mode and the corresponding design dialogs of the components is a convenient way to define global per-template settings that you don't want to be required to be set specifically on each component instance.