---
schema_version: "1"
id: bb57dc137afad7dd7f141e4b12a9b2a5e1bbdc96ae16d655a8d920c26fe76413
title: Best Practices for Page Block Components
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---

# Best Practices for Page Block Components

## Adding More than Two Child Components to `<apex:pageBlockSectionItem>`

An `<apex:pageBlockSectionItem>` component can only have up to two child components. Sometimes, though, you want to add an extra child component. For example, you may want to add an asterisk before an `<apex:outputLabel>` and still display the associated input text field. You can do this by wrapping the asterisk and output label in an `<apex:outputPanel>` component, as follows:

**note:** For this page to display account data, the ID of a valid account record must be specified as a query parameter in the URL for the page. For example:

```nolang
https://MyDomain_login_URL/apex/myPage?id=001D000000IRosz
```

<!-- otherprops: apex_page set_clipboard -->
```markupex1
<!-- Page: -->
<apex:page standardController="Account">
    <apex:form >
        <apex:pageBlock title="My Content" mode="edit">
            <apex:pageBlockSection title="My Content Section" columns="2">
                <apex:pageBlockSectionItem >
                    <apex:outputPanel>
                        <apex:outputText>*</apex:outputText>
                        <apex:outputLabel value="Account Name" for="account__name"/>
                    </apex:outputPanel>
                    <apex:inputText value="{!account.name}" id="account__name"/> 
                </apex:pageBlockSectionItem>
            </apex:pageBlockSection>
        </apex:pageBlock>
    </apex:form>
</apex:page>

```