Introducing content items

Create content

Before you start creating new content, ask yourself if you need a completely new item, or if you'd rather copy something you already have in your project.

Create content items

1. In Content & assets, click Create new in the upper right corner.
2. If collections are available to you, select one for the new content item.
3. Select a content type.
4. If multiple workflows are available, select one for the new item.
5. Click Create.
6. Type a name for the new content item.

And that's it! Your new content item is now created. Each change you make is saved automatically.

The name you've given to your item serves as the item's identifier in Kontent.ai. And because the content item name is shared across all your item's variants, you can find your item in any language.

To find the created content items, navigate to the content item list under Content & assets. To find a specific item, click Content & assets and search for the item by its name or content. You can also use the filters available to speed up the navigation.

Create localized content

If you're part of an international team and you're creating content in different languages, you might want to look into language variants. Language variants represent different versions of your content for different languages and regions. For example, you might have a single blog post translated to English, Spanish, and French.

Duplicate content items

Sometimes, you might find yourself in a situation when you need a slightly different version of the same content item. Maybe you're A/B testing your landing page and want to change a thing or two to see which version is more appealing to your visitors. Or, you're putting together a new job advertisement for the same job position but in a different local branch.

1. In Content & assets, open the item you want to duplicate.
2. Click More actions in the upper-right corner.
3. Choose Duplicate.
4. Choose Including content.

A duplicate of your content item named “Item_name (copy)” is automatically created in the project. Your new duplicate contains elements, components, and linked content of the original content item. The version history, contributors, comments, and due date don't get copied.

If you have several language variants of the content item, all of them get duplicated as well.

Duplicate empty content items

If instead of Including content you choose Empty, you create a blank copy. This is the same as creating a new content item of the same type. Make sure to name your new item so you can easily find it in your project. 

Create content for your website

When using Web Spotlight, your website's content is organized in the page tree for easy navigation.

1. In Web Spotlight, select a page for which you want to create content.
2. Switch to the Editor tab.
3. In Content, specify a content item that should be displayed on this page.
   • If there's no Content, you might need to look for a different name, depending on how your project admins set it up.

In the following sections, you'll get more familiar with what content items have to offer and how to use them to your benefit.

To manage your website using Web Spotlight, learn how to add, edit, and preview web pages.

Get the most out of your content items

Every content item consists of different types of elements, depending on the item's purpose. For example, you might have a rich text element for the content itself, an asset element for the images, or a linked items element for the related blog posts. This also means that you will work a bit differently with each of these elements.

On top of that, elements in content items can be divided into content groups. These groups are shown as separate tabs in your content items enabling you to focus specifically on the elements you need at the moment.

Now let's look a bit closer at how you can leverage some of the most frequently used elements in content items.

Receive guidance while writing content

While you're in the process of creating new content, you might notice that some of your elements have guidelines written at the top. This might come in handy especially in case you get stuck with something.

And if you're unsure about whether you're meeting the limitations, check the element's lower right corner. For example, you might see the maximum number of characters or the number of images you can upload within the element.

If you think the limitations should be set differently, reach out to the administrators of your project and arrange the changes with them. You can see if you meet the limitations by checking the "left to complete" indicator shown on the Details sidebar located on the right.

Add format and structure to your content

So, you've just created a new content item and want to get started right away. The element you're probably looking for in this case is the rich text element. This element offers you a variety of formatting options by simply selecting a piece of text and choosing one of the options from the toolbar. But the rich text element isn't only about the text itself, as its name might suggest. You can also enrich your content even more by adding links, images, or tables. Place your cursor in the text and click Insert….

Uncover the full potential of the rich text editor in our Composing content in the rich text editor tutorial.

Work with media

To add a new asset to a content item, drag your file onto an asset element. Or click browse to select a file from your hard drive. You can upload anything from pictures to videos, or even documents, such as PDFs.

Find more about how to replace, reuse, and tag your assets.

Kontent.ai automatically puts the new asset in your project’s asset library as well.

Create relationships in your content

Let's say you want to link blog posts to their respective authors or link products that fall under the same category as your new product. To link existing related content to a new content item in your project, open the item for editing and look for the option to Add existing items. It can look similar to what you see in the image below.

Adding an existing item creates a relationship between these two items, meaning you can expand the related item for view right from the parent item, or even publish the items together.

After adding linked items to the element, you can reorder, remove, or expand the items to open them for the view. To edit the related item, click Edit to open the content item for editing. Read more about linking related content together.

You can also embed related content items directly into your text. The linked items will behave in the exact same way as when added via the Add existing items button.

Quick actions to get you up to speed

Now we're off to a good start! You've created a valuable piece of content, enriched it with images, and even created relationships between your items. But why stop there?

When you open your content items for editing, you will see a set of quick actions right at the top. All of these actions, plus the ones that you can access via More actions, are there to help you get your job done as quickly as possible.

Send your content to review

Once you're done with writing a new piece of content, it's time to get it reviewed. You can do so by changing the workflow step of the item and assigning a contributor, in this case, the reviewer who will take a look at it.

To change the workflow step of an item, click  Change workflow step. You'll see a popup in which you can change the workflow step to Review or any other step you need. You can also use it to assign a contributor, set a due date, and add a note.

Learn about workflows and assigning contributors in more depth.

Collaborate with your team members

While creating new content is one thing, you also need to make sure that what's written in your content items is actually correct. Maybe you need to ask your teammate a question or suggest to one of your collaborators an idea for the text you're writing together. And this is where comments and suggestions come into play. Kontent.ai makes it easy to comment on any part of the text or assets in your items.

To add a comment to the text, select the portion of the text you want to comment on and click Add comment. To make sure it reaches your colleague, mention them by typing "@". If you want to suggest something specific or point out a typo directly in the text, select a portion of the text similarly to when adding a comment and click Add suggestion.

When you've done your part and are about to send the piece of content to a teammate of yours, maybe you want to tell them there's something they should do. That's what tasks are for. Add a task and assign it to your teammate so they know what you need them to do.

Compare the changes and restore older content

Sometimes you might need to check the changes you made or restore accidentally updated content to its original state. To do that, click More actions in the upper right corner of your item and choose Compare versions. You can now compare the differences between versions in the highlighted sections.

Note that you can also use the Ctrl + Z shortcut (or ⌘ + Z on Mac) to undo the latest changes made to your content. See other helpful shortcuts you can use in Kontent.ai.

Preview your content before publishing

To see your content before it gets published, open the content you want to preview.

• When using Web Spotlight to create content for your website, you can preview your changes directly in Kontent.ai by switching to the Preview tab.
• Otherwise, click the Preview button in the upper left of the item. If you don't see the button, contact your developers to set up a preview environment.

Make your content go live

Now that you're finished with your content and the reviews are all done too, the only thing left is publishing it while also making sure you're meeting the set limitations.

Publishing content is similar to sending your content item to review as you're also changing the item's workflow step. To publish an item, open the item for editing and click  Publish… in the upper right of the item. If this option isn't available to you, you might not have the permission to publish content or the current workflow step cannot transition to the Publish step based on your project's workflow setup.

If you later need to make changes to your published content, you can create a new version of it. This way, the published content remains visible to the public while you update the item.

The content item name can be changed even when the item's published. If unsure, contact your project admin if it's safe to change it.

Delete content and set content expiration

You can delete content items individually while you are in the process of editing a content item, or you can delete content items in bulk from the content list. If a content item has variants created for multiple languages, you can only delete the variant for one given language at a time and the item will return to a Not translated status.

To delete a specific content item from your project, open the item for editing and click More actions > Delete.

Deleted content items can be immediately restored by clicking the Undo button. Content items that have been deleted for a longer period of time cannot be restored.

To delete more content items from your project:

1. In  Content & assets, select content items using the checkboxes next to their names.
2. Click More actions.
3. Choose Delete.

The selected content items are now deleted.