How to make the display column in a table a page?

Yes, absolutely this can be done.

And not such a basic question, because as far as I know the functionality for this is quite new. (Or it could be that I just missed it before…)

One would need to add a button column to the projects table. This button “duplicates” a template page, and stores the link to the page in a second column. You can also specify the destination of the page. This template page can be blank, which would in effect mean you are simply creating a new blank page.

You can also calculate the name of the page. In your case you would simply reference the entry in the project column.

However, in most circumstances people will have some information that they want to put into the template.

It just so happens I shared a document earlier this morning in the “How to” section of the Coda community. It is a little more expanded than what you mention, but the principle, I think, is there: Managing knowledge gathering in Software and other projects