If you work with Sharepoint Designer, use your own page layouts and want to have them for a page in a publishing site, you have to put in some controls in order to see th page content in you custom page layout. Put in a appropriate place in you page layout ( taken from ArticleLeft.aspx):
<div> <PublishingWebControls:EditModePanel runat="server" CssClass="edit-mode-panel"> <SharePoint:TextField runat="server" FieldName="Title"/> </PublishingWebControls:EditModePanel> <div class="captioned-image"> <div class="image"> <PublishingWebControls:RichImageField FieldName="PublishingPageImage" runat="server"/> </div> <div class="caption"> <PublishingWebControls:RichHtmlField FieldName="PublishingImageCaption" AllowTextMarkup="false" AllowTables="false" AllowLists="false" AllowHeadings="false" AllowStyles="false" AllowFontColorsMenu="false" AllowParagraphFormatting="false" AllowFonts="false" PreviewValueSize="Small" AllowInsert="false" runat="server"/> </div> </div> <div class="article-header"> <div class="date-line"> <SharePoint:DateTimeField FieldName="ArticleStartDate" runat="server"/> </div> <div class="by-line"> <SharePoint:TextField FieldName="ArticleByLine" runat="server"/> </div> </div> <div class="article-content"> <PublishingWebControls:RichHtmlField FieldName="PublishingPageContent" HasInitialFocus="True" MinimumEditHeight="400px" runat="server"/> </div> <PublishingWebControls:EditModePanel runat="server" CssClass="edit-mode-panel roll-up"> <PublishingWebControls:RichImageField FieldName="PublishingRollupImage" AllowHyperLinks="false" runat="server" /> <asp:Label text="<%$Resources:cms,Article_rollup_image_text%>" runat="server" /> </PublishingWebControls:EditModePanel> </div>