Content items

Content items provide a universal and reusable way of working with content in the Content hub application and can be reused across channels (website, email, headless). Each item belongs to a single workspace and represents a piece of structured content defined by a content type.

Examples of content items include testimonials, author details, and FAQ sections. See Content modeling for more information about the recommended information architecture of projects.

Content items are useful for numerous scenarios:

• Content reusability
• Separation of structured content from the presentation layer
• Multichannel content distribution
• Headless scenarios

Find content items

The Content hub will often contain a large number of items. The search bar allows you to find items with a name or content type matching the entered text in the current workspace.

The listing displays only items in the current workspace. If you have access to multiple workspaces, you can switch between them using the workspace switcher located at the top left of the Content Hub interface.

If you select a folder in the tree, the listing only displays items located directly in the given folder. You can use the search function to find items, including subfolders.

You can also Filter the list of content items to display only selected content types, items with specific statuses, items containing specific tags, or items with authentication requirements.

Create content items

1. Select New content item.
   
   1. Enter a Content item name which identifies the content item in the admin UI.
   2. If content folders are enabled, select the Location for the new content item.
   3. Choose the Content type of the new content item.
      
2. Select Continue.
3. Enter the values required by the selected content type.
4. Save the new content item, which creates a draft version of the item in the current workspace.

The content item is now created.

Edit content items

1. Select the content item you want to edit.
   • Use the search bar, filter or folders to find content items.
   • If you have multiple languages set up, select the language in which you want to edit the content item from the language switcher.
2. Make sure the content item is in the Draft status or another custom workflow step.
   • When a content item is Published or Scheduled, select Edit content item to transition it to the Draft step and enable editing and publishing of the item.
     
   • When a content item is Unpublished, select Create new version to move the item to the Draft step.
     
3. Edit the fields of the content item.
4. Save the updated content.

Move content items

You can move content items into a content folder or a different workspace. The action is available both for individual items in the list, and as a mass action after selecting multiple items.

To move content items:

1. Open the Content hub application.
2. Select the content items you want to move.
   • Use the search bar, filter or folders to find content items.
3. Select the Move () action.
   
4. Select the workspace or content folder where you want to move the items.
5. Move the content items.

The content items are now moved to the new location.

Link content items

Content items may support linking other items to create nested hierarchies. For example, a content item representing a medical practitioners office can link to other content items representing employed doctors, patient testimonials, and so on. These relationships are determined by the content model used by your project.

1. Edit a content item that supports referencing other content items.
2. You can choose existing content items to link via Select existing in any workspace you have access to, or create a completely new content item using Create new.
   
3. Save the changes.

The content items are now linked to the edited item. Each linked item also respects its status – it may not be immediately active upon being linked. Linked items can be published together with the main item using Cascade publishing. To learn how the life cycle influences linked items, see Content items life cycle.

Add tags to content items

Depending on the configuration of your project, content items may support taxonomies and tags.

1. Edit a content item that has a field with the tag selector.
2. Select tags that describe the content item.
   
3. Save the changes.

The selected tags are now stored with the content item. Developers can use the information to display content based on tags.

View content item details

Switch to the Properties tab on the left to display various information about the selected content item, such as its name, content type, and culture.

Track usage of content items

Even if your project contains thousands of content items, you can keep track where each content item is linked and in what channels it is displayed. Tracking the usage of a content item is useful to see what impact editing or deleting the item would have. For example, you can check whether the content item you are about to delete is used in published content and whether deleting the item may break that content.

1. Open the Content hub application.
2. Select the content item you want to track.
   • Use the search bar, filter or folders to find content items.
3. Navigate to the Usage tab to view where the selected content item is used. Switch between the two view modes in the menu on the right:
   • In reusable content – list of reusable items which directly link to the selected item.
   • In channels – list of channel items (for example pages or emails) which display the selected content item. The selected item can be linked directly in the channel item, or indirectly through other reusable items. In the In reusable content column, you can see the name of the reusable item that is the direct parent of the selected item, if the selected item is linked through another reusable item.

Publish content items

Content items must be published before they can be delivered to your audience through various types of channels. For example, a website channel’s pages only display published content on the live site.

You can publish items under the following conditions:

• If the item’s content type is under workflow, the item must be in the last step of the workflow, or you need to belong to a role with full control for the given workflow (this allows you to publish items from any step).
• For items that are not under workflow, the item must be in the Draft step.

To publish a content item:

1. Open the Content hub application.
2. Select a content item that has recently been edited and is in the Draft status, or a workflow step from which you are allowed to publish the item.
   • Use the search bar, filter or folders to find content items.
3. Publish the content item. For items under workflow, select Change workflow step and choose the Schedule / Publish step.
4. Choose when you want to publish the item:
   • Publish now
   • Schedule publish – select a date and time in the future. The system will automatically publish the item at the given time (see Scheduled publishing).
5. Select Confirm.
   • If the item has fields linking to other reusable content items, the cascade publishing dialog opens.

Once published, the item is available for use within individual channels. When you edit a published content item, a new draft version is created. The item’s last Published version remains public.

Scheduled publishing

When publishing content items, you can choose to postpone the publish action to a later time. Select the Schedule publish option while publishing, and then pick a date and time when you want the system to automatically publish the item.

Once an item is Scheduled, it can no longer be edited (like a Published item). However, the item is not available for your audience until it actually becomes published.

If you need to edit a scheduled item, you have the following options:

• Select the Edit content item action – cancels the scheduled publish and moves the item to the first step in the item’s workflow cycle (Draft).
• Expand the Edit content item menu and select Cancel scheduled publish – cancels the scheduled publish and moves the item to the final step in the item’s workflow cycle (Draft for items without workflow).

Mass publishing

To publish multiple content items at once:

1. Open the Content hub application.
2. Select the checkboxes on the left side of the list to choose the content items you want to publish.
3. Select Publish under the search bar.

The Publish selected content items? confirmation dialog opens. Items can only be published if they fulfill the following requirements:

• Items under workflow must be in the last step of the workflow, or you need to belong to a role with full control for the given workflow (this allows you to publish items from any step). Items without workflow must be in the Draft step.
• You must be allowed to publish the item under the item’s workflow restrictions for roles.
• The item must be translated in the currently selected language.

If any of the selected items do not fulfill the requirements for publishing, they are listed in the dialog. You can directly edit () items in the list to make adjustments and move items to a publishable state.

To confirm the mass publish, select Publish or Continue (appears if cascade publishing of linked items is possible for any of the published items).

Cascade publishing

When publishing (or scheduling the publish for) content items with fields linking to other reusable content items, the cascade publishing dialog opens. Here you can view all content items that are associated with the item you’re about to publish, but are currently not published. If you are publishing multiple items using mass publishing, the dialog displays linked items for all published items (in this case, the main published items are not listed).

You can select linked items to be published together with the main items. Linked items that currently do not fulfill the requirements for publishing are displayed, but cannot be selected. Leaving linked items unpublished may lead to missing data or other issues in the content of the published items.

Cascade publishing is available when publishing all types of content, including: reusable content items in Content hub, pages, emails, and headless items.

Together with the main items, cascade publishing allows you to publish reusable content items linked in the following ways:

• through the fields of an item, page or email in the Content view of the respective application
• recursively through the fields of another linked item
• linked on pages through Page Builder widget properties using the Combined content selector form component

Cascade publishing does not support publishing of:

• related pages linked through fields with the Pages data type
• headless items linked through fields with the Headless items data type
• pages linked through Page Builder widget properties using Page selector and Combined content selector form components
• pages or content item assets inserted or linked in rich text editor fields

Revert content items to published status

After creating a new version of a content item, the item goes through a new editing cycle with the Draft step and optionally other custom workflow steps.

At any time before the new version is published, you can revert the item back to the last Published status. All changes made in any workflow step will be lost.

1. Open the Content hub application.
2. Select a content item that has been edited.
   • Use the search bar, filter or folders to find content items.
3. Expand the Publish or Change workflow step menu.
4. Select Revert to published to revert the changes.

The item is now reverted to its Published status.

Translate content items

Before you can translate individual content items in your project into other languages, you need to set those up in the Languages application. For detailed info on how to configure multiple languages in Xperience see Languages.

Afterwards you can start to translate and create language variants of your items:

1. Open the Content hub application.

2. In the header bar, open the language switcher.
   

   The language switcher is available only if two or more languages are set up.

3. Select the language to translate content into.

   • Tip: You can see what languages a content item is translated into in the Languages column.

4. Select the content item to translate.

   Untranslated content items are visually marked by the Not translated () status.

5. Enter the translated name of the content item. You can now choose one of the following options:

   • Copy content from another language is the preselected option. By default, the closest language in the fallback chain is preselected. You can choose a different language from the drop-down list. This option lets you prefill the content item fields with the content available in the chosen language. If a linked content item does not have a translated or published version, a warning will be displayed, and a fallback language variant of the item will be used.
   • Create empty content item allows you to create an empty content item with blank fields. Linked content items need to be re-linked, and files need to be re-uploaded into the new language variant of the translated content item.
     

6. Select Continue.

7. Enter the translated values of the content item’s fields.

8. Save the translated content item.

You have now successfully translated the content item. Note that the particular language variant is now only a Draft and so won’t be accessible on the live site until you publish it. Until you do so, the language variant in the fallback language will be displayed.

Secure content items

Secured content items require that the consumer (e.g., a site visitor) is signed in before the content item is displayed.

To secure content items:

1. Open the Content hub application.
2. Select the content item you want to secure.
   • Use the search bar, filter or folders to find content items.
3. Switch to the Properties tab.
4. Set the content item’s security configuration.
   • Requires authentication – only visitors signed in to the website can access the item.
     
5. Select Save.

Secured content items show a lock icon when listed in various places in the Xperience admin UI.

Note that secured content items are only available for website channel pages, where the system can identify which users are authenticated. Secured items are not included in the content of emails or headless items (even if selected in the fields of such items).

Unpublish content items

An unpublished content item is not available for use by any channels, but you can still access it from the administration.

To unpublish a content item:

1. Open the Content hub application.
2. Select a content item you want to unpublish.
   • You can only unpublish content items that are already published or scheduled to be published in the future.
   • Use the search bar, filter or folders to find content items.
3. Expand the Edit content item menu and select Unpublish options.
   
4. Choose when you want to unpublish the item:
   • Unpublish now
   • Schedule unpublish – select a date and time in the future. If the item is scheduled to be published, the unpublish time must always be set after the publish time. The system will automatically unpublish the item at the given time.
5. Select Confirm.

Once an item is Unpublished, it is no longer available.

To edit or re-publish an unpublished content item, select Create new version for the content item. This creates a new version of the item in the Draft step.

Change scheduled unpublish options

If you wish to cancel scheduled unpublishing for an item, expand the item’s Edit content item menu and select Cancel scheduled unpublish. To change the unpublish date and time, use the same approach to cancel the scheduled unpublish and then schedule it again.

Delete content items

1. Open the Content hub application.
2. Locate the content item you want to delete.
   • Use the search bar, filter or folders to find content items.
3. Delete () the content item.
   • If the deleted content item is used in other content, you may want to check the usage of the item and edit all content where it is used.
   • Tip: You can quickly see whether a content item is used by checking the In use column of the content item listing.

The content item is now permanently deleted.

To delete multiple items at once, select the items in the list and use the Delete button under the search bar.

Content items life cycle

Content items can transition through the following statuses:

• Draft (Initial) / Draft (New version)
• Custom workflow step (the item is being edited, “between” the Draft and Published status)
• Scheduled (will be automatically published at a selected date and time in the future)
• Published
• Unpublished
• Not translated

Each status changes the behavior of the item in the system.

Generally, items in the Draft (Initial) status are only shown in content previews, e.g., in page previews of website channels or email previews. In live content, only Published content items are shown. When you edit a Published item and move it to Draft (New version), the published content remains the active (main) version shown live until replaced by the new draft. Unpublished items can only be found in the Content hub application. Finally, Not translated items do not exist in the currently selected language. See the following diagram:

The same general behavior also applies to linked content items. A content item in the Draft status linked to a content item in the Published status will only show up in content previews (not in live content) until it transitions to Published.

The following flowchart demonstrates available status transitions:

Advanced scenarios

This section looks at a couple of example scenarios and explains how they can be influenced by statuses.

• Content item with linked items
• Creating new drafts of published (linked) content items
• Content item assets
• Publishing a content item containing non-published content items
• Publishing a content item containing items with a new draft version

Content item with linked items

Scenario: I have a content item with multiple linked content items. How does the status of the linked items impact my main item?

The status is evaluated independently for each content item. Linked content items that are in the Draft (Initial) status will not be shown as part of the main content item. For example, an FAQ section will be missing all linked “FAQ” content items that are in the Draft (Initial) status.

See the following diagram for an illustration:

Linked item 2 (Draft new version) contains a published version that the system uses instead. However, Linked item 3 has never been published before and therefore has no version that the system can use for live content.

Creating new drafts of published (linked) content items

Scenario: I have a published content item (that may or may not be linked by other items) and create a new draft version of it. How does this affect the published data?  

Creating new drafts of published items doesn’t interfere with existing public items at all. The draft version is stored in the background and when eventually promoted, silently replaces the current published version.

Content item assets

Scenario: I have content item assets linked from a content item. How does the status of the asset affect the integrity of the main content item?

Same as with regular content items, the status of content item assets is evaluated independently. Initial draft versions (i.e., newly created, never before published) will not be shown in live content until Published. Draft versions of published assets only replace the current public version when the entire item transitions to Published. Unpublished assets are not shown in the content of other content items.

Publishing a content item containing non-published content items

Scenario: I have a draft content item A which includes another draft content item B. How does the draft status of the included content item B affect the publishing of content item A?

When publishing a content item which links to content items that are not published, all of the content items can be published at once using cascade publishing.

Publishing a content item containing items with a new draft version

Scenario: I have a draft of an item that includes another linked item. Even though there’s a new version of the linked item, I want to publish the first item with the older (currently published) version of the linked item. How does the draft status of the linked item affect publishing of the first item?

When trying to publish a content item which includes content items with a new draft version, you can select which content items to publish along with it. You can choose not to publish the linked item, which means the currently published version of the item will be used, until the new version is published.