A common complaint among content editors is that a CMS isn’t flexible enough for them. While you can produce a website that looks similar to all the others out there, it’s not always easy to find a CMS that can match up to your compelling ideas. If your designer comes up with a new vision for showing your data, the content editor needs to have a way to execute on that vision.
As one of the co-authors of The TYPO3 Guidebook: Understand and Use TYPO3 CMS, I help others get the most out of TYPO3 and better understand the tools their developer co-workers use every day. While TYPO3 comes with a number of built-in content elements, like text, images, and headers, it also allows you to build your own models of content, which makes it easier for your content editors to input structured content creatively, while maintaining design and brand consistency.
What Sets Content Modelling in TYPO3 Apart
TYPO3’s ability to build complex content structures is a boon for content editors and designers alike, even more so because the content editing and modelling experience is relatively straightforward. As Luisa Faßbender, a project manager who’s worked with TYPO3 since 2015, describes it, “Creating and managing content in TYPO3 is effortless and doesn’t require special training or demos. You can pretty much onboard yourself quickly by simply playing around.”
The element-based content framework in TYPO3 is a big part of what makes life easier for editors. The self-contained, modular nature of these content elements helps break down all steps of the content modelling process into manageable building blocks. These core elements include:
- Text
- Media
- Interactive elements
- Forms
- Menus
- Special elements like “insert records”, HTML, and dividers
Working with content elements in TYPO3
Rearrange your content with no fuss
It can be frustrating when your content isn’t turning out the way you envision it. TYPO3’s modularity makes it a simple matter to experiment and change the layout on the page. Content elements can be added or switched around by dragging and dropping, ensuring your pages are dynamic works-in-progress, not set in stone.
Trim back your workload with content reuse
When you’re working across multiple sites, it’s likely you will need to reuse a content element that’s already been created. You can duplicate it, but over the long-term, this becomes a tedious and unsustainable process for your content editors, and can increase the load on your site. In TYPO3, content reuse can be accomplished more efficiently with the special element, “insert records”.
“Insert records” creates a reference, so you can display the same element multiple times without going through the work of copying it. Besides mirroring the content element, whenever you edit the original, the updates will automatically apply across all the places it’s referenced, allowing your content editors to move their attention on to other matters.
Adhere closely to your brand standards with configuration options
Details matter to designers, and they need a CMS that can support this level of passion. With multiple configurations available at your fingertips, TYPO3 gives granular control over how each content element can be displayed, ensuring your brand standards are upheld. Additionally, these can be defined and locked in to the element itself, so that editors are free to focus on doing what they do best, making the content.
Designing Content Models in TYPO3
A content model is a representation of a set of data, laid out in a specific way. It could be something like a “quote” element if you plan to build a website around quotes from celebrities, or a “teaser” element, displaying a teaser text and a link to another page for a news website.
Whatever type of content model you need to build, the process is largely the same; data gathering, layout and construction of pages, and refining design choices to fully fit your brand.
Throughout these steps, TYPO3 helps make the content editing and modelling experience easier, more flexible, and efficient.
Start by exploring content types
If what you need doesn’t already exist in the core content elements, build a custom one. Custom content elements, like the “book quote” element below, can help make your editor’s job easier by fitting the exact parameters of your project, campaign, or site.
Define your field types and gather your data to set the stage
To create a custom element, first you’ll need to add it to the TYPO3 content table. Next, take the time to think about the data you need to capture, and what type of fields your editors will need. If you need some inspiration, you can look to the core elements. For example, the Header content element, as seen below, contains the fields:
- Header
- Type
- Date
- Link
A more complex element, like Text and Media, contains various settings for sizing, display, and positioning on the page. Consider whether your custom element might require these configuration options.
Put your content element into action
Add the newly built custom element to the content element window. Once this is done, editors can easily find and select it to add to a page.
Render for the finishing touch
To finish your content element, you have to instruct TYPO3 how to render it for the frontend. If you’re using the Fluid template engine, you can accomplish this by editing the directory with a small snippet of code, which the Guidebook shows how to do. To double check your content element looks the way you want, hit preview.
There’s still more to learn
TYPO3’s granular, element-based system provides content creators and editors with increased creativity, flexibility, and efficiency when building complex content models. TYPO3 also gives designers confidence that their brand standards can be maintained with an array of configuration options. Check out the TYPO3 Guidebook to learn more about building content editing experiences and how to work collaboratively with your dev team.
Buy the book : The TYPO3 Guidebook: Understand and Use TYPO3 CMS
Author Bio: Heather McNamee is a technical-communications and marketing professional with an MSc in Learning and Technology. She uses marketing skills for good, enabling the right audiences to find, learn, and get the most out of products and projects they love. Her more than 15 years in open source technologies and associated start-ups began in a non-profit organization using Drupal in 2002. She’s developed hundreds of hours of learning and certification materials to facilitate open-source technology and product adoption. Heather is one of the co-authors of the recently released The TYPO3 Guidebook: Understand and Use TYPO3 CMS. She also has expertise in designing strategic content plans and campaigns, writing and editing strategic and technical content, and running client workshops.
