SharePoint 2010 - Page Layout Control Currently Disabled

This is an interesting "got-ya" I discovered. I was building branding for a new site recently which required a custom master page and several custom page layouts. The plan was to start building the master page in steps along side of the home page layout. After building a new master page and a base page layout in SharePoint Designer, I applied the master page, then went to apply the new layout on the home page when I noticed the Page Layout button control in the ribbon was grayed out. Clicking the button revealed a disturbing message in the dropdown menu... "This control is currently disabled."

This master page was largely based on previous versions I've created so it was really perplexing. The only difference from this and the previous master pages I created was I repositioned the ribbon back up to the top (as it is normally out of the box), where I normally move it under the navigation. I had then put the SiteActions control below the SPRibbon next to the Additional Page Links, where I normally have it next to the Global Navigation. So typically the SiteActions sits above the Ribbon is all previous cases.

In this case I was designing this for Anonymous Access and didn't need the ribbon for 99% of the visitors, so I thought I'd add in Javascript and Security trimming logic to hide the RibbonRow for Anonymous users at the top so it wouldn't effect the design when it was eventually rendered, but make the site actions visible in the banner for those that had privledges. Well, there in lies the problem.

If I put the SiteActions Control after the SPRibbon control the Page layout button control is disabled. Putting Site Actions inside of the Ribbon and before the ribbon tabs restores the Page Layouts Button. The key is making sure SiteActions is placed before the Ribbon Tabs. This is a sad contraint, and I can't see a reason for the limitation so I'll chalk this up to a flaw. I have yet to find a workaround so make sure your designs have these considerations.