Managing content

November 14, 2023

Authoring in pages and content folders

For a page-first approach, you can create pages in Page Composer, which allows you to edit your content directly in pages. This gives you a preview of your page and you can visually decide where to add new content items.

When working content-first, content folders are an alternative, allowing you to organize your content inside folders first using the content types defined in your system. Then you can reference the content in headless applications or inside pages using Page Composer. Pages in your site can also automatically display the content that you create in folders.

Working with pages in jContent

The section explains how to manage your sitemap and contribute pages and provides an overview of working with content in pages in jContent.

Managing your sitemap and contributing pages

While you can work with content from pages in jContent, you do not manage sitemaps or pages here. You also cannot create and delete, move and reorder pages, or directly add new content to pages. Instead, you manage the sitemap from Page Composer and use it to create content in the context of your page.

Tip: You can copy and cut content from jContent and paste it directly or as a reference in a page opened in Page Composer in another tab.

Understanding what you see when selecting a page

When you are selecting a page in the tree, content displays in the main window which is divided in two sections: the top toolbar and the list of content.

About the top toolbar

The top toolbar shows the page title and a breadcrumb on the left. At the right of the toolbar you can find the following options:

  • Search 
    Lets you search your content. For more information, see Searching folder and pages.
  • Open in Page Composer
    Opens the current page in Page Composer in a new tab.
  • Edit
    Opens Content Editor for the page itself, where you can edit the properties of the page
  • Publish menu
    Lets you publish or unpublish your page. For more information, see Publishing content and files.
  • Publication status of your page
    Shows you if your page is available online (indicated by the Live badge) or not (Not published badge). The Modified badge indicates that some content has been modified or added in your page and you will need to publish your page to reflect these changes in your live site.

Just below the top toolbar, you find the action bar. For pages, you can only refresh the view and export the page (using the 3 dots button). When selecting content in the list, the action bar updates to apply to the selected items. At the right of the toolbar, you can switch between the flat list or structured views.

About the page content list

There are two tabs, the Contents one only lists the content items of the page. The Sub-pages one lists the sub-pages. 

The content of a page displays in a flat hierarchy. Content appears at the same level in the list and the area, and list structure of the page does not display. Jahia also filters out technical areas in this view, as these generally contain technical information.

The advantage of a flat list is that you do not need to know the area or list structure of your page to find your content. This also means, for example, that a list of news appears at the same level as the news inside this list. The following example illustrates how all the 6 news items belong to the news-list. The 6 badge next to news-list indicates that this item contains 6 elements, which are the 6 news items that display below news-list.

page-listing.png

About the structured view

The structured view is available with Jahia 8.1

When switching to the structured view, the entire content structure of the page is displayed, including the technical areas. This view can be used to create new content or to move content around.

structured-view.png

Navigating to a list in a page and adding content to it

This section shows you how to browse lists in jContent and add content to a list.

Browsing to a list

Lists, or content that has subcontent, can easily be identified in the list. The number of sub contents displayed next to their title and you can open these lists and content in jContent. Using the above example, double clicking on news-list opens the news list in jContent. You can also open the context menu on news-list and select View sub-contents. You now see the only the content that are in the list.

jcontent-news-list.png

The top toolbar updates to display information about the news-list. The Edit button opens the news-list for editing in Content Editor and the Publish button and publication status apply to the news-list. The action bar also updates, and as you are not displaying a page anymore, you can add content to this list. Content created this way also displays in your page in Page Composer.

Adding content in a list or area

To add content in a list or area:

  1. Navigate to a list or area.
    1. For areas, you need to use the Structured view
  2. Click the + New content button and select a content type.
    Note: If less than 3 different content types are specified for the current folder, then buttons to directly select these content types replace the + New content button. The list in the above example only allows News items to be created, thus the creation button is + New News entry.
    Note: The option to create new content is also available from the context menu of lists.
  3. Provide information about the content. For more information on what you can add, see Using Content Editor.
  4. Click Save.

Working with content folders

This section shows you how to create a content folder, provide an alternative folder name, restrict the types of content that are allowed in a folder, and add content to a folder.

Creating content folders

You can create new content and folders from the Content Folders page in jContent.

To create new content or folders:

  1. In jContent, click Content Folders in the left navigation pane.
  2. To create a new folder:
    1. Click the + New content folder button. The following characters are not allowed in the content folder name: \/:*?"<>|.
      Note: You can also click the More options button 
      cmm_more_options.png
      beside an existing folder to open the context menu and create a sub-folder from there.
    2. Enter a folder name and click OK.

Providing alternative names for a content folder

You can provide an alternative name, and translations for this alternative name, for a content folder. This alternative name is used in jContent, and can contain any character.

Note: This does not apply to folders containing files in the Media section.

To add an alternative name to a content folder:

  1. In jContent, click Content Folders in the left navigation pane.
  2. Open the context menu for the folder and select Edit.
  3. Use the Title field to enter the alternative name. You can switch the language to enter translations.
    Note: The System name is the same in all the language and cannot contain the following characters \/:*?"<>|.

Restricting content types for a folder

You can restrict the types of content that users can create in a specific folder. This enables you have specialized folders to manage where content is created and stored. For example, you may only want users to be able to create news items in a news folder.

Only users with the View content type restriction tab permission can set restrictions. This permission is granted by default to site administrators only.
Note: Folder restrictions only apply to new content that users create in the folder.

To restrict content types in a folder:

  1. In jContent, click Content Folders in the navigation pane.
  2. Open the context menu for the folder and select Edit.
  3. On the edit content page, select Advanced options>Content type restrictions.
  4. Enable Content type restrictions.
  5. Move the content types that you want to allow in the folder from the left column to the right column.
  6. Click Save.

Creating content

For information on defining the types of content that can be created in a folder, see Restricting content types for a folder.

Note: The option to create new content is also available from the context menu of folders.

To create new content:

  1. Navigate to the folder where you want to create content.
  2. Click the + New content button and select a content type.
    Note: If less than 3 different content types are specified for the current folder, then buttons to directly select these content types replace the + New content button.
  3. Provide information about the content. For more information on what you can add, see Using Content Editor.
  4. Click Save.

Opening content for editing

You can open content for editing in Content Editor by:

  • Hovering your cursor over a content item in the list and clicking on the edit button.
  • Right-clicking on a content item and then selecting Edit.

Previewing content

Previewing content makes it easier for you to identify the different content items inside a page, a folder or in search results. Preview also enables you to quickly see a visual representation of content in both its staging and live versions.

To preview content:

  1. In jContent, navigate to the page or folder that contains content that you want to preview.
  2. Hover your cursor over an item in the list and click on the preview button
    cmm-3.PNG
    .
    The Preview pane displays the staging version of the content item.
  3. Click Live to preview to the published version of the content.
Note: You can use the keyboard arrow keys to navigate between the content items you are previewing.

Exporting content

You can export content from the Page and Content Folders sections. For example, you can export lists, rich text, and news entries.

To export content: 

  1. Navigate to the page or content folder where you want to export content from.
  2. Right-click and select Export from the context menu. 
  3. In the Export options dialog, select either Staging content only or Staging and live content.
  4. If you chose Staging content only, you can select to Export to an XML file to export as an XML file rather than a ZIP file.
  5. Click Export.

The content exports to your default download location.

Importing content

You can import content from the Content Folders section. For example, you can import lists, rich text, and news entries.

To import content: 

  1. In jContent, click Content Folders in the navigation pane.
  2. Navigate to the content folder where you want to import content to.
  3. Right-click on Import content from the context menu or the Create menu.
  4. Navigate to the XML or ZIP file on your machine and then import the file in your browser. Alternatively, you can drag-and-drop the XML or ZIP file from your machine to the content folder area. When you drop the file, the import starts automatically.

If you import a file in another format, an error message displays. You can either close the message or click Don't import.

Note: You can import multiple files at once, either by selecting them in your browser or dragging-and-dropping them to the content folder area.

See also