Organizing the content¶
Content Locations¶
To fully use eZ Platform's content management capabilities it is important to understand how content is organized in the Content tree.
A Content item by itself does not have a place in the Content tree and is not visible for a visitor of the website. To be available on the website it has to be assigned a Location ID. A new Content item is automatically assigned a Location when you publish it, so you don't have to worry about it.
A Content item can have more than one Location ID. It will then be shown in more than one place in the Content tree. A single Location, however, can only have one Content item in it.
An example of using multiple Location for a Content item is when you have an Article about, e.g. a local sports team's victory, which you can place in the tree both under Local News and Sports News.
Even if a Content item is placed in more than one Location, one of the Locations (by default the first one) is always considered the main one.
To assign other Locations to Content, view this Content item's Location tab and activate Add Location, then select the new parent from the Content Browser.
Hiding Locations¶
You can also manage the availability of Content by hiding or revealing it. You can do this in the Content item's Locations tab by activating the Visibility switcher. Notice that hiding and revealing only affect a Location, not the Content item. This means that even if you hide the Content in one Location, it will still be visible in any other Locations it is assigned to.
When a Location is hidden, all of its children (other Content items that are under it in the tree) will also be automatically hidden. They can only be revealed if the parent Location is revealed as well.
A hidden Location will not be visible to anyone when viewing the website. If you are looking for a way to allow only some users to view parts of the Content tree, you can so it by establishing Sections and combining them with proper permissions.
Swapping Locations¶
You can swap two Content items in their Locations by going to the Location Content Swap section in the Location tab and selecting a Content item to swap with.
Managing existing content¶
You can move or copy existing Content items by choosing the proper option from the menu on the right. You can also copy a whole subtree, that is a Content item with all content under it in the structure.
Note
Copying very large subtrees may take too much time and server effort. That is why the system administrator may set a limit on how many Content items can be copied at the same time.
See Copy subtree limit in the developer documentation on how to set this up.
Remember that Copying creates a new separate Content item. If you only want to "attach" the same Content item to another place in the Content tree, add another Location to it.
You can remove Content by activating Send to Trash in the menu. In Page mode this option is located in the Options menu at the top. If you remove a Content item that has children (other content under it in the content tree), both this item and the children will be removed. This also breaks the connection between the items, so you will not be able to restore them with the same structure.
Notice that the Content item is not removed completely. It is moved to Trash, which you can access from the left menu. In the Trash you can select removed Content items and restore them to their original Locations. If the Content item's parent has been removed, you can select a new parent Location.
If a Content item has more than one Location, selecting Send to Trash will remove the Content item only from the current Location. The content will appear in Trash only once you have removed the last Location.
You can permanently remove all content from the Trash by activating Empty the Trash. Warning! This action cannot be undone!
Sections¶
You can divide your Content tree into Sections to better organize it. Sections let you decide which users will have access to which parts of the tree. To see which Section a Content item belongs to, look at its Details tabs.
You can set up Sections in the Admin Panel in the Sections tab. A few Sections are provided with each installation, but you can add new ones, depending on your needs.
In the Sections tab you can assign Sections to content or delete them. You can only delete Sections that don't contain any content.
Each Content item must belong to a Section. By default new Content is placed in the same Section as its parent. If you want to remove a Content item from a Section, you just need to assign it to a different one.
Access to Sections can be restricted by setting up proper permissions.
Links¶
In your site you can link to external websites by placing links inside rich text, or by using a URL Field. You can manage the links using the Link manager available under Content.
The Link manager shows a list of all links in the site. Click any item in the list to see details and check which Content items use this URL.
You can edit any link in the Link manager. It will then be changed in every place where it is used, across all Content items.
The Link manager list also shows whether the link is alive or dead in the Status column. The Last checked column displays when the status was last verified.
Editing links
When editing a link in the Link manager, you cannot change it to an already existing link. The new URL must be unique.
An edited link will automatically be marked as "Valid".