When starting to brand a SharePoint site, there are 29 Placeholders to get to know in the default.master.  This can be a daunting task especially if you are new to SharePoint, which is normally one of the first tasks assigned as the corporate image is vital (I won't dig at management about getting functionality first ... oops I did).  In this post I have a set of placeholders drawn on top of a the default master page which hopefully will give you an idea of what is in each place holder.  The purple placeholders are the main place holders on a page, whilst the orange placeholders are embedded default content of a parent placeholder.

Over time, I hope to post about the default content of many of these placeholders.

	Placeholder	Description
	PlaceHolderGlobalNavigation	The global navigation
	PlaceHolderGlobalNavigationSiteMap	The global navigation breadcrumb.  This is a nested placeholder.
	PlaceHolderSiteName	Site name
	PlaceHolderSearchArea	Search box area
	PlaceHolderTopNavBar	Top navigation area
	PlaceHolderHorizontalNav	Top navigation menu for the page.  This control is nested inside the PlaceHolderTopNavBar
	WSSDesignConsole	The page editing controls when the page is in Edit Page mode (in the browser, click Site Actions, and then click Edit Page)
	SPNavigation	Empty by default in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. Can be used for additional page editing controls such as in a publishing portal.
	PlaceHolderPageImage	Page icon in the upper-left area of the page
	PlaceHolderTitleLeftBorder	Left border of the title area
	PlaceHolderTitleBreadcrumb	Main content breadcrumb area
	PlaceHolderPageTitleInTitleArea	Page title shown immediately below the breadcrumbs
	PlaceHolderMiniConsole	A place to show page-level commands, for example, WIKI commands such as Edit Page, History, and Incoming Links
	PlaceHolderTitleRightMargin	Right margin of the title area
	PlaceHolderTitleAreaSeparator	Shows shadows for the title area
	PlaceHolderLeftNavBarDataSource	Data source for the left navigation menu
	PlaceHolderCalendarNavigator	Shows a date-picker for navigating in a calendar when a calendar is visible on the page
	PlaceHolderLeftNavBarTop	Top of the left navigation area
	PlaceHolderLeftNavBar	Left navigation area
	PlaceHolderNavSpacer	The width of the left navigation area
	PlaceHolderLeftNavBarBorder	Border element on the left navigation bar
	PlaceHolderBodyLeftBorder	Border element for the main page body
	PlaceHolderPageDescription	Description of the page contents
	ContentPlaceHolder	Main content of the page
	PlaceHolderBodyRightMargin	Right margin of the main page body
	PlaceHolderFormDigest	The "form digest" security control
	PlaceHolderUtilityContent	Extra content at the bottom of the page
	PlaceHolderBodyAreaClass	Additional body styles in the page header
	PlaceHolderTitleAreaClass	Additional styles in the page header

One able to identify the placeholders, the next step is to understand the default content that is rendered inside of each placeholder, followed by each application and site page and the placeholders they use.