Knowledge Base

Web content management

  • At a basic level, Terminalfour is used for building and maintaining large amounts of digital content.
  • Users at various levels can be given permission to add and modify content. All content goes through an approval cycle, at which point dedicated "approvers" review the content. In some cases, this may be the authors who wrote the content; in other cases, a more complex workflow may be used to allow several people to review the content. 
  • Once content has been approved, it is ready to "go live". This happens in the publishing process. Page layouts (header/footer) and content layouts are wrapped around the content to ensure the content is displayed correctly. 
  • One piece of content may be published to various channels. These are simply output mechanisms, like websites, mobile sites, paper publishing, etc. By applying the page layouts and content types, different displays can be achieved whilst still just producing one piece of content.
  • At the publishing stage, external data can also be incorporated. This could be information from a database, website or similar. 

Web Content Management

Site structure

  • The first part of building a website is identifying at least the high-level architecture. In Terminalfour this involves building a site structure consisting of sections.
  • There are many types of Section, and each type has an icon so you can identify it.
  • Once the different options have been explained by the trainer, build a small site structure you can use as a foundation for your new website.

Site Structure

How to create sections

  1. On the Site Structure screen, locate the section under which you wish to add your first section. Click Actions > Create section.
  2. Enter the relevant information to create a section. As a minimum, the Name must be filled in. All other default options are explained on the next page.
  3. Click Save changes to save the section.
  4. Repeat the steps above to add additional sections. Section information can be modified at any stage.

How to Create Sections

General Section Details

When creating sections, the only required element is Name. Additional elements are described below:

Name: This is the name of your section and is typically used in the menu navigation and forms the basis of the URL for the published page (if an Output URI is not specified).

Status: There are three status levels:
Approved: Sections are published when they have at least one approved Content Item.
Pending: Pending Sections will not publish, even if the content within the Section is Approved.
Inactive: Deleted Sections have an Inactive status. Sections can be restored by changing the
status to Approved.

Mark as link section: Link Sections contain no content and instead link to another Section in the Site Structure or an external URL.

eForm section: This option is used if you want to submit an eForm. Refer to the documentation for eForms for further details.

Advanced Settings

It should be noted that depending on your Section metadata content type, more fields may be available at the top of the Advanced settings. These fields are installation specific and hence not covered here. 

Custom Page Title: This is an example of an installation specific element, added using the Section meta content type. This element is not used in this T201 training.

Content owner: Select the Content Owner from the list. If left blank, it will inherit from the parent section. The content owner can be used in workflows or get notified when content expires.

Output URI: Lets you specify the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) as the destination of the new Section. Using this field improves the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for this Section. Otherwise, with the field left blank, the Section's name is used when publishing.

Output file name: Specify the file name used for the page. When you leave this blank, the system uses the default file name configured in the Channel Settings.
Want to hide this option from your users?
Go to Administration > Hierarchy & Content Settings > Hierarchy > Enable output to filename

Default workflow: The default Workflow for this Section's content.

Access key: You can enter a single character which is used as a shortcut within a Link Menu Navigation Object.  

History and versions

  • Terminalfour allows you to see all changes made to content, compare different versions and set previous versions of the content live.
  • To see how this works, modify a piece of content; then compare the two versions of the content.
  • Set the original version of the content live again.

Compare Selected

Comparing History Versions

How to review history and versions

  1. Modify a piece of content: select Edit content from the Actions menu beside the section containing the content.
  2. Click the content’s name to open it or select Edit from the Actions menu.
  3. Make changes to the content and click Save changes.
  4. Click back into the content and go to the History tab or select History from the Actions menu beside the content.
  5. Select the two versions of content you wish to compare by checking the box for each version (located in the far right column).
  6. Click Compare selected to display both versions of content in a side-by-side comparison; elements where changes have occurred are highlighted in yellow.
  7. Click Back to return to the History tab.
  8. You can set any version as the current version by clickingActions > Make current > Confirm.

Content options

  • When adding a new piece of content or modifying an existing piece, there are additional options available to control and manage the publishing of the piece of content.
  • The content options can be used to manage when the content will publish, expire, be reviewed, and archived. All the fields are optional.

Content Options

Content Options

Publish date: schedules a publish date, i.e. the date the content will go live on the site. The content has to be approved before it can be published.
Expiry date: content will expire and be removed from the site.
Review date: Terminalfour will email the Content Owner on the selected date. If no owner is set, the person who last modified the content will be notified instead.
Archive section: allows you to specify a section for the content to go to once it has expired. If you are publishing lots of content, it may be a good idea to create an Archive Section to store expired content in. This way the content can be used and published again later. Click Select section and select a section; the section id is inserted as a reference.
Content owner: sets an owner to the Content Item.

How to manage content options

  1. To modify a piece of content, select Edit content from the Actions menu beside the section containing the content.
  2. Click on the content’s name to open it.
  3. Click the Options tab.
  4. Fill in the relevant fields by clicking the box to open the calendar; simply click on the date you wish to use and adjust the time by clicking the clock icon and selecting the hours and minutes. If you do not set the time, it will default to the current time.
  5. Click Save changes to save your work.

Upload and use an image

  • Now that you understand how the Media content type is pieced together, you should have a better idea of how the Media Library content is used.
  • Upload an image to the Media Library, create Image Variants and use the image in content.

Upload and Use an Image

How to upload media

  1. From the site structure screen, locate the section you added content to earlier.
  2. Go to the Actions menu and select Edit content. Click on the content you want to edit.
  3. In the main body of your content, place the mouse where you want to insert an image; click the media icon.
  4. The media library opens. Locate the category you wish to add the image to and click on it.
  5. Click +Add media (the use of Name, Description and Keywords is dependent on your media content layouts):
    1. Media file: drop your image file here or click to select the image from your drive.
    2. Name: enter a name for your Image. By default, this is not output on the site, but is used only as a name in the
      Media Library to allow easy identification.
    3. Description/Alt text: by default, this is used as the alt tag and should always be filled to describe the image.
    4. Media type: select Image -this is automatically detected where possible.
    5. Syntax highlighting language: for non-binary files you can select what syntax highlighting to use (if any).
    6. Media Language Dependence:
      1. Fully independent: the media is the same in all languages and cannot be translated.
      2. Independent media file: the file and thumbnail exist independent of language. Other elements can be modified based on language, such as the image description/alt text.
      3. Fully dependent: all elements depend on language and can be translated.
  6. Click Save changes to add your image.
  7. The image is ready to be used. Hover over it and click Select.

Upload and use a PDF

  • You can upload a PDF to the Media Library, use it in your content and edit the Media Attributes.
  • Edit your content.
  • Open the Media Library and locate your category.
  • Upload a PDF and add a link to it.

Upload and Use a PDF

How to upload a PDF

  1. To add a PDF link to your content, click where you want the link to be and click the Media Library icon.
  2. The Media Library opens. Locate the Category you wish to add the PDF to and click on it.
  3. Click +Add Media (the use of Name, Description and Keywords is dependent on your Media Library's configuration):
    1. Media file: click here and select the relevant PDF.
    2. Media type: this is automatically detected where possible. Alternatively, select the Media Type you want to use.
    3. Name: enter a name for your PDF. By default, this is used as a name in the Media Library to allow easy identification and serves as the link text in your content.
    4. Description: give your PDF a description; by default, the description of PDF’s is for internal use and does not appear on your webpage
    5. Syntax highlighting language: for non-binary files you can select what syntax highlighting to use (if any).
    6. Media language dependence:
      1. Fully independent: the media is the same in all languages and can hence not be translated.
      2. Independent media file: the file and thumbnail exist independent of language. Other elements can be modified based on language.
      3. Fully dependent: all elements depend on language and can be translated.
  4. Click Save changes to add your PDF document to the Media Library.
  5. The PDF is ready to be used. Click it to add a link to your content.
  6. The PDF link has been inserted into your content.
  7. If you do not wish to use the item’s Name as the link text, double-click on the PDF link text to open the Media attributes.
  8. In the empty Name element, enter the new link text.
  9. Click Ok to return to the content screen.
  10. Click Save changes to save the changes you’ve made.

Mirror and duplicate

  • Branches of the Site Structure as well as individual pieces of content can be Mirrored and Duplicated.
  • If you Mirror a piece of content, there is only one ID, and any changes made to the content will affect all instances of it.

Mirror Content/Sections Configuration

You can enable/disable the mirroring of sections or content by changing the settings:
Administration > Hierarchy & content settings > Hierarchy > Enable mirroring of sections
Administration > Hierarchy & content settings > Hierarchy > Allow non-mirroring of content

Mirror and Duplicate

How to mirror/duplicate

Mirror/duplicate content

  1. Select Edit content from the Actions menu beside the section containing the content you wish to mirror or duplicate.
  2. Select Mirror or Duplicate from the Actions menu beside the content.
  3. The Site Structure opens. Click on the Section you wish the mirrored/duplicated content to appear in. A small icon appears beside the mirrored content. Hover the mouse over it to see the various locations of the content. The duplicated content, however, will appear as new content. 

Mirror/duplicate branch

  1. Select Mirror Branch or Duplicate Branch from the Section Drop-Down Menu beside the section containing the content you wish to duplicate.
  2. Select the Section you wish to place the mirrored or duplicated section under.
  3. A mirrored section’s folder symbol will have an arrow pointing out for the original section and an arrow pointing in for the new section.

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