Content hub

Content hub provides a way for users to create, store, manage, and publish content across multiple channels. Each piece of content is stored in the hub as a reusable content item.

Content items are universal and reusable across channels (website, email). Each item represents a piece of structured content defined by a content type. For example, testimonials, author details, FAQ sections, and other elements used by your project. See Content modeling for more 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

The content hub UI lists all content items in the system:

Create content items

1. Select New content item.
   
   1. Enter a Content item name which identifies the content item in the admin UI.
   2. Choose the Content type of the new content item.
      
2. Select Continue.
3. Enter the values required by the selected content type.
4. Save or Publish the new content item.
   1. Saving creates a draft version of the item.
   2. Publishing immediately sets the item to the Published workflow state.

The content item is now created.

Upload files

You can upload files to content items of certain content types to create content item assets. Content item assets can store various types of files, for example, photos, pictures, sound files, videos, package files, presentations, or documents. You can reuse assets stored in the Content hub throughout the system.

To upload a file to the Content hub:

1. Open the Content hub application.
2. Select the New content item button.
   
3. Select a content type that has an Content item asset field.
   • Search for content types named Image, Media, File, Asset, etc. The name of the content type depends on your project configuration.
4. Enter the values of the content type fields and upload a file via the uploader.
   
5. Save the new asset.

The asset is now created and needs to be published before it is publicly available.

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.

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

Edit content items

1. Select the content item you want to edit.
   • Use the search bar or filter 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 workflow step.
   • When a content item is Published or Archived, select Edit content item → Create new version to transition it to the Draft step and enable editing and publishing of the content item.
     
3. Edit the fields of the content item.
4. Save the updated content.

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 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 workflow state – it may not be immediately active upon being linked. To learn how workflow influences linked items, see Content items and workflow. 

View content item details

Switching to the Properties tab of an edited content item displays various information about it, such as its name, content type, and culture.

Publish or discard content items

Whenever you edit a content item, a new draft version is created. Its latest Published version remains public. You can decide whether to publish the current changes or discard them and keep the original version.

1. Open the Content hub application.
2. Select a content item that has recently been edited and is in the Draft workflow step.
   • Use the search bar or filter to find content items.
3. Choose one of the following actions:
   • Publish the content item to make it available for use within individual channels.
   • ... → Discard the changes if you want to revert the content item to its latest published state. Discarding a content item that has no published or archived versions deletes the item instead.
     

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.

4. Select the content item to translate.

   Untranslated content items are visually marked by the Not translated () workflow 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 or filter 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.

Archive content items

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

To archive a content item:

1. Open the Content hub application.
2. Select a content item you want to archive.
   • You can only archive Published content items. See how to publish items.
   • Use the search bar or filter to find content items.
3. Edit content item and select Archive.
   

The content item is now Archived and is no longer available.

To edit or re-publish an archived content item, you can Create new version of the content item. This creates a new version of the item in the Draft step.

Delete content items

1. Open the Content hub application.
2. Locate the content item you want to delete.
   • Use the search bar or filter to find content items.
3. Delete () the content item.
   

The content item is now permanently deleted.

Content items and workflow

Content items can transition through the following workflow states:

• Initial draft/Draft
• Published
• Archived
• Not translated

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

Generally, items in the Initial draft state 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 create a Draft version of a Published item, the published version remains the active (main) version shown live until replaced by the new draft. Archived items can only be found in the Content hub application. Finally, Not translated items are non-existent 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 state linked to a content item in the Published state will only show up in content previews until it gets transitioned to the Published state.

The following flowchart demonstrates available workflow state transitions:

Advanced scenarios

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

Content item with linked items

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

The workflow state is evaluated independently for each content item. Linked content items that are in the Initial draft state 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 Initial draft state.

See the following diagram for an illustration:

Linked item 2 (Draft) 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 workflow state of the asset affect the integrity of the main content item?

Same as with regular content items, the workflow state 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 the Published state. Archiving assets automatically removes all existing association with other content items.