Understanding the Site Content Editor

The site content editor is a tool that allows partners to define sections of a site that are editable to site administrators. These sections are known as editable regions, and can be updated in a user-friendly live-update manner as below:

ice-example

The site content editor allows a user to make simple content changes, such as updating text, images, links, and module content within a web browser. The editing options are simple and elegant, and using them requires no knowledge of HTML code or other software because the functionality is built in to the online interface.

To access the site content editor, log in to the admin of a site and click the Edit tab of the top navigation ribbon:

edit-tab

After logging in through the Admin Console, the site content editor interface is intuitive to use. It is similar to editing text with standard word-processing software.

In the remaining sections of this article, site administrators will learn how to use the Admin Console to create roles and set permissions to control the page elements business owners (and other users) can update.

Understanding site editing roles

If you want to create a new site from scratch in a third-party HTML editor, you need to enable the site content editor by adding the code to your pages.

The site content editor is integrated tightly with the user roles set up in the Admin Console. The basic idea is that each site's administrator can add permissions to specific roles and then assign users to these roles. A single user can be assigned to multiple roles; a user can access features based on any permissions that are enabled for any of the roles they are assigned.

For example, you can choose to set up roles for the following sets of team members:

Administrators: You and other trusted members of your web team that help develop the site

Designers: Team members responsible for updating and maintaining site templates

Content providers: Team members responsible for publishing new text and images

Editors: Team members responsible for copy-editing and fixing links

Moderators: Team members responsible for approving submitted user-generated content

The list above is just a general list of roles--you are free to create any roles you desire, and name them whatever you'd like. It really just depends on the project. In smaller sites, perhaps only you and the business owner are the only users who update the site. In a larger project, you may have a large number of team members that focus on specific areas of the site, or perform specific tasks. This system offers precise control over who can edit, add, or delete content on the site. And this control is all based on how you set up the roles.

To create a role, follow these steps:

  1. Log in to the site's Admin Console and select Site Settings > User Roles

  2. Click New Role.

  3. In the Role Details page that appears, enter a descriptive name of the new role in the Role field. Click Next.

    new-role
  4. In the next screen, select the desired users and click the arrow pointing to the right to move the desired user from the left pane to the right pane to add them to the role. Any users listed in the right pane are assigned to this role (and you can change this setting at any time). Click Next.

     

    In the example above, Julie has been assigned to the role, but Amy has not.

    Note:

    If you click the second arrow down (pointing to the right) it this moves the entire list of users from the left pane to the right pane. If you make a mistake and move a user to the right pane accidentally, select the user's name and then click the arrow pointing to the left to move their name back to the left side.

  5. In the Assign permissions screen, select the desired tasks that are available to users who are added to this role by using the right pointing arrow to move the tasks from the left pane to the right pane. Press and hold the Control key (Windows) or the Command key (Mac) to select multiple non-consecutive items at once. You can also press and hold the Shift key to select a group of consecutive items in the list. After moving the desired tasks to the right pan, the role's permissions have been set.

As you can see from the steps above, you can separate tasks available to specific team members, based on the permissions that you grant to the roles they are assigned. Here's an example of how you could set the permissions for the roles described previously:

Administrators: All permissions are enabled by default (and should not be disabled)

Designers: Add, delete, edit, and view templates

Content providers: Add, edit and view web pages; Add, edit, and view photo galleries

Editors: Delete, edit, and view web pages; delete, edit, and view photo galleries

Moderators: Delete, edit, and view blogs; delete, edit, and view comments; delete, edit, and view forums

Getting Started with the site content editor

To get started with setting up editable regions and specifying the region types, see Configuring a site using the Site Content Editor.

To get started editing site content using the editor, see Editing site content using the site editor.

If you are having issues with either of the above workflows, see Troubleshooting the site content editor.