Overview: Create content with built-in modules
Built-in content modules
The simplest way to create reusable content is by using Sitefinity built-in content modules. Built-in modules represent specific types of content most commonly used on websites, for example, news, blogs, forms, and so on.
You can see a list of all built-in modules under the Content tab.
Once you create news, an event, or other content item, it is stored in the Sitefinity project and other users can view, use, and edit this content.
To display content items on one or more pages of your website, you use widgets. Each content item has a widget that is used to display only that specific content item. For example, events are displayed on the website using the Events widget. For more information about using widgets, see Widgets.
After you create a content item and make it visible on the website through a widget, you can manage comments for that item or set specific permissions.
In addition to the standard Sitefinity built-in modules, you can create your own dynamic modules. To do this, you use the Module Builder. For more information, see Dynamic modules.
Revision history
Built-in modules have version history. As a result, you can view and compare different versions of a content item. Every time you edit a content item, a version of that content item is saved by the system. For more information, see Revision history for content items.
Content modules and multiple sites
In case you have multiple sites, before you create or view any content items, you must choose the site where you want to work. You do this using the selector in the upper-left corner of the page. Different sites can have different modules.
Each site that uses the module has its own data provider. You can configure the provider to be shared with other sites as well.
Each module can use more than one data provider. For example, the News module of site A can use news created with site A or site B. Therefore, creating content items for one site allows you to use these items in all other sites. If you have configured a module to use more than one provider, when opening the module, you can choose news from which provider to display. All available data providers are displayed in the toolbar of the page.
For more information, see Multisite: Manage multiple sites.
URL generation for images, videos, documents, and files
The automatic generation of the URL for a file uses the following convention:
http://<my site URL>/<X>/<the URL name of the data source>/<the URL name of the library>/<the URL name of the document or file>.<the file extension> where X is docs for documents and files, images for images, and videos for videos.
- The URL name of the data provider
The URL name of the default data provider is default-source.
You can change the URL name of the data provider in the following way:
- In the main menu, click Administration » Settings.
- Click Advanced link.
- In the tree on the left, click Libraries » Providers.
- Select the provider whose URL you want to change and click Parameters » urlName.
- In Value, enter the new URL.
If you enter “”, then the URL name of the data source is not included in the URL of the item.
- Click Save changes and restart the application.
IMPORTANT: You must not change the provider URL name after you have uploaded items, because this can break the URLs of the already uploaded items.
NOTE: The documents from upgraded projects have URLs that are generated without the data provider name. They will still work and will use the default library provider for the system.
- The URL name of the library
The URL name of the default library is default-document-library for documents, default-album for images, and default-video-library for videos.
The URL names of the other libraries are their names.
- The URL name of the item
You can change the URL name of an item by editing its properties.