One of Laura’s main tasks as a WCMS manager is to create and update web content. In this lesson, we focus on how she can do that using SmartEdit's Basic Edit mode. This mode is one of the five available modes in SmartEdit which we cover in this training. Later in this lesson, you will also learn how to make your changes visible to customers by synchronizing your modified content from the staged to the online catalog version using the page status.
Let’s get an overview of SmartEdit’s Basic Edit capabilities covered in the next video:
Basic Edit and Synchronization
Basic Edit Mode Features in a Nutshell
Let‘s summarize what the Basic Edit mode allows Laura to do:
Laura can view page information and edit pages by adding or modifying components in page content slots. Thus, Laura is only allowed to make changes affecting her current page using the Basic Edit mode. It lacks permission to edit shared content slots (visualized by the "chain" icon).
To get to the pages Laura wants to edit, she can navigate using the Pages tab. To save time, she can also press the hotkey ESC to navigate between pages as if she were on the Web site. Pressing ESC again or any other UI control returns her back to Basic Edit mode.
Cloning a page allows her to reuse it as a base-line for slight changes, instead of creating a similar page from scratch. She can also delete a page.
The described features can be found here:
Creating New Components
As a WCMS manager, Laura is allowed to create new components. Every newly created component is then also added to the list of saved components for later reuse.
This functionality is available here:
Consider This When Creating or Reusing Components:
Reusing an existing component in different slots makes it a shared component. This feature must be handled with care to avoid unwanted side effects. Technically, the reused and the original component are still only one instance of the same component. Thus, whenever this component is modified, no matter where, that change will affect all slots on every page where this shared component is used.
Alternatively, if Laura really needs a new instance, it’s also possible to create one by simply cloning an existing one, saving time by reusing its configuration.
Once Laura has saved a new component, it gets automatically added to the list of saved components. Only then it becomes available for reuse or cloning.
Laura can also drag components between different slots to find the best fit.
Let’s have a look at where components can be:
- Created
- Reused
- or Cloned
Managing Media Assets
Of course, image management is also supported for components that show media, including localized information for the different webstore languages. Let’s take a banner for example.
Note
This might look different on your system depending on your configuration to access the media, e. g. from a cloud storage or a DAM (Digital Asset Management System). But don’t worry, the general concept of how they are used remains the same.
Note
SmartEdit’s Basic Edit mode also supports the management and application of restrictions to hide or show components and pages under certain conditions, but this will be covered in a later unit–stay tuned.
Manual Page Status Management
Page statuses ensure that only pages that have been reviewed and are ready to be published are synchronized to the online version of your content catalog.
Imagine Laura created a new page or modified an existing one. In both cases, the page status is set to Draft automatically and synchronization isn't permitted.
Thus, in a next step, Laura, or another WCMS manager have to review the page and manually set the status to Ready to Sync.
Only now does SmartEdit allow the synchronization of a page to the online catalog version. After successful synchronization, SmartEdit automatically changes the page's status of the page to Synched.
With proper permissions set, Laura could even manually change the status of a page:
From Draft to Ready to Sync, or from Ready to Sync back to Draft, or even from Synched to Draft.
Note
Even though SmartEdit also supports the manual management of pages, it's recommended to use out-of-the-box workflow functionality instead, especially in larger teams. This is covered in the next lesson.