What are content types?

Content types define the content models that your composers use when creating content. They also give you the flexibility you need to reuse content across all of your channels, while at the same time, maintaining content consistency.

Imagine your content composers are required to regularly launch new product lines. They need a place to create and store various images, text, videos, and files that relate to the product they are launching. Plus they need to provide content for different channels such as websites, email, and social media, plus different media such as desktops, tablets, and smartphones. These are the things you need to consider when developing your content models, and creating your content types.

Creating a content type

Hub managers are responsible for creating and managing content types. When you create a content type, you start with an empty canvas. Your goal is to add structure to your new content type for content composers to use when they create content. You add the elements that you want composers to use when they compose their content.

Figure 1. Add elements to create a content type
The figure shows six elements being added to a content type. The content type has six elements, three text elements, two image elements, and one video element.

You might create a content type named Product that contains the following elements:

  • A text element to store text for use in a website.
  • A text element to store text for use in an email.
  • A text element to store text for use in social media.
  • A file element to store a PDF of product specifications.
  • A file element to store a PDF of a user manual.
  • A video element to store a promotional video.

Elements are accessed from the palette that slides out from the side of the screen when you first create a content type. You can hide the palette when you don't need it, and show it again when you do. When you find the element you need, click on it to add it to the content type. You can click and drag each element to reposition it on the page.

If you edit a content type, your changes affect all content items created from your content type. Your changes are applied to a content item only after a composer opens and edits a content item. Content composers are notified of your updates when they update a content item.

You can delete a content type only if all content items that are created with that content type are already retired or deleted.

Integrating with other content models

When you develop your content model, you also need to consider how your content is classified, and how images are displayed in different media and channels.

To allow composers to classify content using categories from your hub-managed taxonomies, add a category element to each content type you create.

Plus, when you add image elements to your content types, you can select which image profiles to use so that each image uploaded or selected in an image element is perfectly rendered on a website or app.

Content types come in different flavors

Content types can be used to create content, pages, landing pages, and custom elements. You define how your content type is used on the information tab of the content type form.

  • Standard content types are displayed in the compose content menu.

  • Custom elements are displayed in the element palette.

  • Page types are displayed in the site manager when adding new pages to a site. Your developer must have mapped your content type to a layout before you can define a content type as a page type.

  • Landing Page types are displayed in the landing page manager when creating new landing pages. Your developer must have mapped your content type to a layout before you can define a content type as a landing page type.

Finally, give your content type a unique identity

The content type thumbnail is used to visually identify content types in lists and searches. This thumbnail can also be used as the default content thumbnail when no image is available in a content item.