Manage custom content types and templates

It is a best practice to define the types of content that will be on your website, community, portal, or intranet and create custom content types before you start building your site.

Create a Custom Content Type

There are two primary benefits of creating custom content types:

• You can give each content type a name that clearly describes what it will be used for.
• You can choose the content templates that are acceptable for the content type.

For example, a site might have case studies that appear in full on one page and as a summary on the sidebar of another page.

For this, you could create a custom content type called “Case Study” and associate the Document Style 1 and Small Block content templates with it.

Rather than using the core Text content type, which has many content templates to choose from, this custom content type makes it easier for content creators when they want to add a case study to the site. They will know which content type to use, and there are only two content templates to choose from.

To create a custom content type

1. In the OrchestraCMS Setup panel, Under Templates, click Content Types.
2. Beside the Custom Content Types table heading, click New.
3. Enter a descriptive name for the content type in the Name box.
   • This uniquely defines the content type and can’t be changed after the content type is created.
4. Enter a descriptive label for the content type in the Label box.
   • This is what users see throughout the OrchestraCMS interface and can be the same as the name.
5. Click to select the Content has a parent/child structure check box if the content type includes one or more of the following core content templates (you might have additional legacy or custom content templates that use a parent/child structure):
   • Breadcrumb
   • Class Styled Menu
   • Mega Menu
   • Simple Horizontal Menu
   • Taxonomy Menu
   • Taxonomy Loader
   • Taxonomy Subscription
   • Class Styled Record List
   • Class Styled Record Detail
   • Form
6. There are two additional options related to child elements if your organization has private sharing and access levels enabled; these options are only applicable if the content type includes one or more menu content templates (i.e., Breadcrumb, Class Styled Menu, Mega Menu, Simple Horizontal Menu):  
   • Exclude child elements from access level rules assigned to parent. If this option is selected, access level rules assigned to content are not also assigned to the child elements (e.g., access level rules applied to a menu are only applied to the root menu and not to the individual menu items—sharing rules would have to be applied to individual menu items separately).
   • Include check box in the Add Visitor dialog when sharing content. If this option is selected, a check box is added to the Add Visitor dialog, which allows users to specify whether manual sharing rules applied to the root menu are also applied to the individual menu items.
7. If you have the OrchestraCMS Past Publishing feature, there is an option: “Allow the setting of the publish start date in the past when creating new content”. This allows users to set the start date of a new piece of unpublished content to be set to a date in the past.
8. Click Add Templates.
9. In the Add Templates dialog, click to select the check box beside each content template that you want to associate with the content type, and then click OK.
10. Click Save.

Add custom content type permissions to OrchestraCMS profiles

After your custom content type is created, it appears in the Create New Content dialog in the Content Type list for users who have access to the content type. A user’s OrchestraCMS profile determines whether they have permission to create, edit, or publish content using specific content types, including custom content types.

Custom content type permissions are not automatically added to OrchestraCMS profiles that have permission to create or modify other content types. At minimum, you must open and save the profile again to grant access to the new custom content types.

To modify the content type permissions for an OrchestraCMS profile

1. In the OrchestraCMS Setup panel, under Site, click Profiles.
2. Click Edit next to the profile that you want to add custom content type permissions to.
3. Under the Content Permissions area, add or remove one or more of the Create, Edit, and Publish permissions for the new content type; permissions for new content types might already be added to the profile, but will not be active until the profile is saved again.
4. Click Save.
   

Delete a custom content type

You can delete a custom content type if you have not created any content with it. If there is content that uses the content type, it can’t be deleted.  

To delete a custom content type

1. In the OrchestraCMS Setup panel, under Templates, click Content Types.
2. Under Custom Content Types, click the delete symbol in the row of the content type you want to remove.

Edit the label of a content type

Once a content type is created, you can change the label but not the name of the content type. The name uniquely identifies the content type during setup.

Everywhere else in the OrchestraCMS user interface, the content type is referred to by its label.

One reason to change the label of a content type is to change how the content type is used.

For example, you might have a custom content type with the label “News” for posting news stories on your site. In the future, you might want to use the same content type to post editorial articles. To make this clear to other OrchestraCMS users, you could change the content type label to “News and Editorials.”

To change the label of a content type

1. In the OrchestraCMS Setup panel, under Templates, click Content Types.
2. Click the name of the content type.
3. On the Edit Content Type interface, edit the Label box, and then click Save.

Assign a default content template for a content type

When you open a piece of content, the content editor uses the default content template if one is assigned.

For example, if you have a custom Case Study content type that is assigned the Document Style 1 and Small Block content templates, and you want content always to open in the Document Style 1 content template, you can set this to be the default template.

To assign a default content template for a content type

1. In the OrchestraCMS Setup panel, under Templates, click Content Types.
2. Click the name of the content type.
3. Under the Default column, click to select the content template that you want to make the default template.
4. Click Save.

Add templates automatically to content of a specific type

You can select content templates to be automatically added to every piece of content of a specific content type. This prevents users from having to add multiple content templates manually after the content is created.

This is particularly useful if content of a specific type always requires more than one content template.

For example, you could have a content type for case studies that always requires one content template for the full case study and one content template for a summary version. You could set those two content templates to automatically generate each time case study content is created.

To add content templates automatically to content of a specific type

1. In the OrchestraCMS Setup panel, under Templates, click Content Types.
2. Click the name of the content type.
3. Under the Auto Create column, click to select the check box in the row of each content template you want automatically generated for that type of content.
4. Click Save.

Change the content templates associated with a content type

You can change which content templates are associated with a specific content type. You can do this with a core content type or with a custom content type.

To add a content template to the list of available templates for a content type

1. In the OrchestraCMS Setup panel, under Templates, click Content Types.
2. Click the name of the content type.
3. On the Edit Content Type page, click Add Templates.
4. In the Add Templates dialog, select the check box beside each content template that you want to make available for the selected content type, and then click OK.
5. Click Save.

To remove a content template from the list of available templates for a content type

1. In the OrchestraCMS Setup panel, under Templates, click Content Types.
2. Click the name of the content type.
3. On the Edit Content Type page, click Remove next to each content template that you do not want available for the selected content type.
4. Click Save.

Edit child element properties for custom content types

Content templates included in the Menu, Taxonomy, Data, and Form core content types are used to create content with a parent/child structure. These core content types are preconfigured to handle child elements.

However, if you create a custom content type and include one or more content templates with a parent/child structure, you have to specify that this structure exists—and how it should be handled—in the content type properties.

These additional options related to child elements are available if your organization has private sharing and access levels enabled. They are only applicable if the content type includes one or more menu content templates (i.e., Breadcrumb, Class Styled Menu, Mega Menu, Simple Horizontal Menu):  

• Include check box in the Add Visitor dialog when sharing content. If this option is selected, a check box is added to the Add Visitor dialog, which allows users to specify whether manual sharing rules applied to the root menu are also applied to the individual menu items.

• Exclude child elements from access level rules assigned to parent. If this option is selected, access level rules assigned to content are not also assigned to the child elements (e.g., access level rules applied to a menu are only applied to the root menu and not to the individual menu items—sharing rules would have to be applied to individual menu items separately).

In addition to the content templates included in the core Menu content type, you may have other legacy or custom content templates to create menus.

To edit child element properties for custom content types

1. In OrchestraCMS Setup, under Templates, click Content Types.
2. Click the name of the content type.
3. On the Edit Content Type page, select the Content has a parent/child structure option to indicate that the content type includes content with child elements.
4. If your organization has private sharing and access levels enabled, and the content type contains content templates to create menus, you can optionally select one or both of the following options (see above for descriptions of these options):  
   • Exclude child elements from access level rules assigned to parent
   • Include check box in the Add Visitor dialog when sharing content
5. Click Save.

When the Include check box in the Add Visitor dialog when sharing content check box is selected for the content type, the Apply to all children check box is available on the Add Visitor dialog when a user manually shares a menu.

Create a custom content template

With the OrchestraCMS Content Template Creator, you can create custom “User-defined” content templates.

The custom templates are available in OrchestraCMS Setup under Content Templates. A button, New Content Template, opens the Content Template Creator so you can begin creating your new content template. Each template has an edit link that allows you to change different parts of the templates. You can choose a content template name, label, and description.

To create a custom content template

1. In OrchestraCMS Setup, under Templates, select Content Templates.
2. On the Content Template page, to the right of “User-defined Content Templates”, click New.
3. On the Content Template Creator page, fill in the “Name”, “Label” and “Description” fields. (The “Description” field is optional but recommended.)
4. Once you type in a name for your new content template, the label field will automatically populate.

Create content template attributes

1. In Attributes and Editor Settings, fill in “Section Title”.
2. Under Type, in the dropdown menu, choose an attribute.
3. Under Attribute name, name the attribute.
4. Under Input Label, give the attribute a label.
5. Continue in the same way to create further new attribute sets.
6. Click Save.

Manage Markup

1. Under Markup, the attributes you have created will appear as buttons at the top of the markup text field.
2. Click on a button to insert the attribute in the markup text field.
3. To display the attribute ID, click the relevant buttons.

Add and reorder the sections in your content template

1. To create a new section, type a name in the “Section Title” box.
2. Click and hold the green bar at the top of a section.
3. Drag it up or down to the order you would like.
4. Click Save.

Modify attributes and content templates

1. To delete an attribute, click on the “X” beside the “Select” box.
2. To edit a content template, in Content Templates, under “User-defined Content Templates, click Edit beside the content template.
3. To delete a content template, click Edit on the content template and then select Delete near the top of the Content Template Creator page.
4. To delete a section, click the arrow at the right of the section pane and then click Delete Section.