Overview: Create and edit content

Content authors have several options how to create and edit the actual content of a specific content item.

• The rich-text content editor
  The text editor provides you with a simple and functional interface to write and format your text before you publish it online. Use the editor to enter and format text, tables, and more. You can also insert already created text, images, links, lists, and so on. In addition, you can create text in HTML mode.
• Inline editing
  You can use the inline editing to edit and upload content to your website directly while browsing it. Using inline editing, you can see how the items you are editing look in the context of the website.

The Content list on the main menu includes all predefined Sitefinity CMS content types, as well as the ones you created.

When creating content types that are organized in a hierarchy, for example, Blogs and Blog posts, you first create the blog and then the blog posts, displayed in this blog. The blog itself is a container for the blog posts and does not have content per se. For example, you create a blog Summer trips that encapsulates the dedicated blog posts for each summer destination.

NOTE: For Forms, Content block, Forums, and media content types, you create and edit content in the classic interface. For more information, see Reference: New content editing experience and the classic interface.

To create content items:

1. Expand the Content menu and choose a content type.

   NOTE: If you have multiple sites, use the dropdown menu in the upper left of the page to select the site where you want to create blogs. For more on multiple sites, see Multisite: Manage multiple sites.

2. Click the button for creating an item, for example, Create a news item.
   

   NOTE: If you are creating a media item, see Media content.

3. When you are using multiple languages, choose the language in which you want to create the post from the dropdown Languages list in the right sidebar.

   NOTE: You might not see the language list when creating your very first post, yet it will be available thereafter. For more information about languages, see Administration: Language settings.

4. Enter a title for your content item.

   NOTE: If you are creating a content type that has hierarchical structure, for example, a blog, you just enter the basic information to identify your content, such as title and URL(s).

5. In the content editing area, create and format your content.
   For more information, see Work with the content editor.
6. Optionally, add a summary.
7. Click Preview to check how your content is displayed on your website.
   When you have one or more pages defined to include news (or a default page), the Preview button is enabled so that you can see the news item on the page you selected in the right panel. For more information about viewing and setting default pages, see Locations of content items: Canonical URLs.
8. If you are ready to publish the news item, click Publish. You could choose a different status, such as draft, publish on a specified date, or discard your input by clicking Back to News. For more information, see Set the status of new pages and content items.

To open a content item for editing, simply click on the item or, from the Actions menu, click Content.

Revise the content item as required.

When you are done, click Publish.
If you configured content workflow on your website, you can have different options. For more information, see Actions available in a workflow.
If you are editing a published content item, the system saves a draft of that item but the published version is still visible on the website. To see which version is the currently published one, see Revision history for content items.

You can delete content items in the following ways:

• Select one or more items and from the Bulk actions menu, select Delete
• From the item's Actions menu, select Delete
• When editing the item, from the More actions menu, select Delete

If you activated the Recycle bin module, the item is not permanently deleted. Instead, it is moved to the recycle bin. You can later restore or permanently delete the item. For more information, see Recycle bin.

You can create more than version of your content. Every time you edit a content item, a version of that content item is saved by the system. You can thus view and compare content versions, add notes to a version, or delete a specific version you no longer need. If you accumulated too many content revisions you no longer need, see Limit the number of revisions stored.

You can define and configure additional information about the content. For example, you can tag and categorize the content or make it more findable via additional URLs. You can also enrich the context of the content with related data and images. You do this without leaving the content editing screen, in dedicated section below the content editing area.

1. In Summary input field, you can enter a summary for the post.
2. You can classify your blog post using the Categories and tags section.
   For more information, see Add categories and tags to content items.
   Classifying content helps you organize it. For more information about classifications, see Overview: Classify your content using taxonomies.
3. In the More options section to access the following:

• The automatically generated URL of the post.
  To change it, click Edit and enter a new URL name.
• Configure multiple URLs for the content item
  1. To configure a content item to have more than one URL, under Additional URLs, click the + sign.
  2. In the input box, enter the additional URL that you want this content item to have.
  3. To enter more URLs, click the + sign.
• Allow or forbid comments.
  To allow or forbid users to leave comments about the item, select or deselect the Allow comments checkbox.
1. If you have added any custom fields for blog posts, all created fields, are displayed after the Custom fields section.
2. Custom fields and hidden default fields - There are many predefined fields that are not shown when creating a new record; that's because they are hidden. Once you have created your first blog, the right panel lets you 'turn on' these default fields as required, or even create your own.
   Click Settings for blogs: Custom fields for blog posts. The Blog posts data fields page opens.

• Custom fields - Categories and tags are already sketched out. You can create your own fields by clicking Add a field in the Custom fields section. You are guided through the various data types and the alternatives for how data is handled and labeled. For more information, see Overview: Custom fields.
• Default fields - Click on a defined field to edit it, then choose an option on the Appearance tab to specify that it will (or will not) be hidden.

Click Save changes to each field, and then click Done to enable your revised field settings.

1. You can preview a blog post by clicking Preview in the toolbar.
   The blog post opens in its default page. If there is no default page, it means the blog post is not displayed anywhere on the site and you cannot preview it.
   To see which the default page for the blog post is, expand Pages in the right panel. The page at the top of the list is the default page. For more information about viewing and setting default pages, see Locations of content items: Canonical URLs.
2. If the post is ready to go public, click Publish. You could choose to make it a draft, or set a publish date, or drop it altogether by clicking Back to Posts. For more information, see Workflow statuses.

Sitefinity CMS provides multiple mechanisms to enhance the created content. From the content create and edit screens you can classify content to achieve better organization, enrich content by relating to other Sitefinity CMS content items, and browse sibling content to apply on-the-go modifications.

Classify and organize your content

Sitefinity CMS provides easy to work with classification functionalities enabling you to organize content on the go. You can assign flat and hierarchical taxonomies to your Sitefinity CMS content via the default Tags and Categories classifications, or create your own ones. When creating a content item, or editing an existing one Sitefinity CMS lists the available taxonomies for the current content type. You can select from existing taxa, or add a new one. The following video demonstrates how you can organize your Sitefinity CMS content using classifications:

For more information, see Overview: Classify your content using taxonomies.

Relate content

Sitefinity CMS makes enhancing the content you produce with related data easy. You can relate content to any other content, thus facilitating complex architectures of structured data that is easily manageable. The content create/edit screens in Sitefinity CMS include a dedicated section below the content editing area lets you browse through the defined related data fields. For more information on configuring related data in Sitefinity CMS see Content relations: Related data.

The intuitive UI offers a suggest-as-you-type selector for related content items, with hints for recently used ones, bulk operations and reordering capabilities. The following videos capture how you work with some of the most common content relations in Sitefinity CMS:

Browse sibling items

When working with hierarchical content types, Sitefinity CMS gives you the option to browse sibling items from the item create/edit screen and open a sibling item for editing. This can be very convenient in scenarios where you are working with a blog post, for example, and realize you have to update a related piece of information in a different post. To do that you click the Browse Other Blog Posts (where Blog Posts can be any other hierarchical content type depending on the content are currently editing) button select the appropriate item from the list. The new content editing experience in Sitefinity CMS provides a smart lock functionality which further enhances browsing and editing sibling items. Smart lock prevents others from opening and editing a content item the instant you start typing in the editing area.

The following video demonstrates the browse sibling items and smart lock functionalities in Sitefinity CMS:

For more information see Collaborate on content.