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Use a dedicated content type for assets

Jan Cerman, David Klement
5 minutes
Assets
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Depending on how and where you use your assets, you may want to specify display options or include additional metadata. To achieve that, it’s best to create a dedicated content type where you define the options and prepare the fields for metadata. You then create components based on that type for your assets and set the assets’ options.
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Use case: display settings for images

Let’s say you want to specify the display width and alignment of images so that your editors can choose how the images are presented on your website:
  1. Create a new content type.
  2. In the new content type:
    1. Add an asset element for an image.
    2. Add two multiple choice elements, one for the display width option and one for the alignment option.
    3. Add guidelines so your content creators know how to use the settings.
This approach opens the door for scenarios such as:
  • Clickable images: Create a content type that includes an asset element for the image and a text element for the URL.
  • Include specific metadata to your files, such as license or source: Add the necessary text or number elements designated for the metadata to the content type.
Group the elements for easier accessWhen working with images, your content creators might first want to see the elements that they use most. Use content groups to assemble similar elements into clearly labeled groups. For example, you can put Image and Caption into a group named Content, Display width and Alignment into a Display options group, and Licenses and Attribution into a Metadata group.

Use components to add images to content

Your content creators will use the dedicated content type for assets when they need to add an image with settings to their content. They’ll create a component, insert the image, and set how wide and with what alignment it should display.
From single-use to re-useIf you later find another use for the content in your component, you can always convert it to a content item by clicking . This conversion cannot be undone. If done by accident, archive the new item and create your component again.

Content item approach in multilingual projects

If you use components to hold your assets, convert them to content items, and use those items as linked items, it’s important to understand how language fallbacks work.  If you add a content item with an image as a linked item in one language (for example, English), it will not appear in any other language (for example, Spanish) unless you translate it into that language. Even if the information you’re including in your image content item isn’t language-dependent (it’s just the creator’s name, for instance), you need to create a variant in every language to have it appear. Copying content from the original language can give you a head start.