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Sharepoint 2013 : SharePoint Publishing Infrastructure (part 3) - Content Management - Site Columns, Content Types

1/20/2015 7:44:03 PM

Content Management

A primary reason for using SharePoint publishing is to make use of content management. The whole point of content management—Web Content Management to be precise—is to allow content owners to create and edit content without needing IT, or worrying about how their content impacts site design.

SharePoint publishing abstracts content management from user interface design and web site development by providing rich features for content orchestration, allowing content owners to do what they do best—worry about just content. Even though the end result is a web page consisting of content merged with HTML, JavaScript, and perhaps Silverlight, the content owners should never have to worry about these UI concepts. SharePoint performs the heavy lifting in providing content abstraction from presentation. At the core, SharePoint consists of lists, libraries, content types, and site columns (fields), and it is these core elements that provide the base content management capabilities. Of course, the assertions made in the preceding paragraph predicate good content model design. A page that consists of one page body field of HTML type is not good design, because content owners have only one place to insert their page content, and this model assumes the content marked up with HTML. A better model consists of pages and page templates with a variety of fields for more granular control of the content.

Site Columns

The publishing infrastructure introduces some additional site column types, specifically for the purpose of publishing content.

SharePoint includes all site column types as part of the installation of the product. Although there is nothing stopping site owners from using them in any situation, Table 3 lists those site column types specific for use in publishing situations. Worth noting is that the site column types in Table 3 appear when creating new site column instances, but not all types listed appear when creating list columns.

Note  SharePoint defines the publishing site column types in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\15\TEMPLATE\XML\FLDTYPES_Publishing.xml. This file includes some non–user creatable site column types, not listed in Table 3, but required for publishing.

Table 3. Site Columns for Publishing

Site Column Type Description
Full HTML content with formatting and constraints for publishing This column type provides a richer text editing experience by using the Rich Text Editor. You use this column type to enable users to apply styles, apply table formatting, and work with reusable content. The column type stores HTML, and the editor provides these authoring and styling capabilities. This column type also helps you control or limit the options users have when creating new content by placing content field controls within SharePoint page layouts. Users may apply content and formatting constraints to the column to ensure that new content appears according to pre-established styles and themes.
Image with formatting and constraints for publishing This column type stores links to images defined in the item properties. Each column displays a thumbnail preview in list views, and users may apply optional formatting. Use this column type to provide users with an easier way to add images rather than having to manually input the URL of the image or web reference. Control over images can be set when placing content field controls within SharePoint page layouts.
Hyperlink with formatting and constraints for publishing This column type stores hyperlinks and displays the hyperlink names defined in the item properties. Use the column type to provide a browsing interface that allows users to browse to an object to link to instead of typing a URL. Link formatting and other options can be set when placing content field controls within SharePoint page layouts.
Summary links data This column type enables users to create bulleted content without the need for a dedicated list to populate the data. Use this column type on publishing pages to present grouped links that use a set of shared styles. Summary links include a title, description, image, and URL. Summary links control and behavior can be set when placing a Summary Links field in SharePoint page layouts.
Rich media data for publishing This column type enables users to add video to a publishing page. Using this column type, you may link to a media file (audio or video) the same way you link to an image. You can insert this column type in a page layout to show the specified videos on pages using that layout.

Enabling the site and web publishing features, SharePoint creates a number of new site column instances. These site columns facilitate content management as suggested columns for typical content.

Content Types

Similar to how I covered site columns,so I shall not burden you with details about them, except to detail those content types available when activating the publishing features. Content types represent an entity in a SharePoint site collection or subsite and consist of a number of site columns. Content types are the schema of list items, where each contained field defines the columns of a list item row in a list or document library. In similar vein, page content types define the schema of a publishing page, where each field represents a content placeholder for a page instance, where each page instance is in fact a list item in a special document library—called Pages.

Having either activated the publishing features in your site collection or created a publishing site, follow these steps to access the publishing site content types:

  1. Click the gear icon.
  2. Select the Site settings menu item.
  3. Click the link for site content types under the Web Designer Galleries heading.
  4. Scroll down to Page Layout Content Types and Publishing Content Types (Figure 4).

    9781430249412_Fig10-04.jpg

    Figure 4. Publishing and page layout content types

The publishing content types include content types that represent base publishing objects, such as master pages, page layouts, and HTML page types. The page layout content types define specific page metadata types from which page instances are created. To illustrate these two sets of content types, I shall provide an example.

Imagine you have created a publishing site for a product company. The web site contains various page instances, each with details about a product that is part of the company’s product line. On each product page, the company wishes to include a high-res image of the product, a brief description, and date the product went into production. One approach to representing products in the publishing site is to create a new content type, called Product, which inherits from the page content type because products display as pages. The page content type includes site columns for the image, production date, and description. You would then associate this product content type with the pages libraries in the publishing site to allow content owners to create page instances based on this new product content type. As you read further in this section, I shall explain how page layouts and master pages control the presentation of content by mapping content types. To continue my example, each page layout infers how SharePoint should render page content with HTML markup. Master pages define the general look and feel of the site, also including HTML markup, and define the common areas included on all pages in the site. Just like the page instances, page layouts and master pages also consist of properties, which SharePoint defines with the publishing content types.

If the page layout content types represent the metadata types for our page instances, why does SharePoint provide content types for the base publishing types? Master pages and page layouts live in the Master Page Gallery in your publishing site collection. The Master Page Gallery is a special document library that contains the master page and page layout files. Similar to other document libraries, and the documents contained in them, master pages and page layouts in the Master Page Gallery may have metadata associated with them. For example, the base page content type includes site columns to define start and end publishing date/time values for time-restricted content.

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