Sitecore: Updating department pages
Adding a new page
First, we’ll look at adding a new page. After logging into Sitecore, click on “Content Editor.”
Navigate to your department’s branch of the SPU Website. For this example, I am going to use my department, University Communications. Now, I already know that my department is nested under the “administration” branch, but if you’re unsure, look at the URL of your department’s website in the browser. The structure of the URL reflects the structure of the Content Editor navigation, so when I see http://spu.edu/administration/university-communications, I know I need to open the administration folder and then the university-communications folder in order to add pages and content to my department’s website.
Once you have decided where your new page belongs, right click on the parent page, select “Insert,” and then “Standard Page.”
Give your new page a name, making sure to only use lowercase letters, numbers, and dashes, with no spaces or special characters.
There are a handful of fields here that you want to add some values to first, namely “Page Title,” “Page Heading,” and “Navigation Title.” The page title shows up on the browser tab and in search results, the “Page Heading” shows up at the top of the page, and the “Navigation Title” shows up in the left-hand navigation.
Once you have these filled in, you can take a look at how the page will show up on the front end by clicking the “Publish” tab and then “Preview.” This will open up a new browser tab, and you can see our “Page heading”, “Page title”, and “Navigation title” all showing up in the correct places.
In order to add content to the page, right click on the page content folder, select “Insert,” and then click “Body Copy with Image.” There are a number of other design components you can use, but for the vast majority of content in Sitecore, “Body Copy with Image” will display your content correctly.
Give this new item a name. Again, make sure to only use lowercase letters, numbers, and dashes, with no spaces or special characters.
For this tutorial, we are only going to worry about two fields here: Title and Body Content. I’m going to put my heading into the “Title” field here. Next, click the “Show Editor” link above the “Body Copy” field. The Rich Text Editor will pop up, where we can add all of the text we would like to see on the page. In this case, I’m going to add some placeholder text. Once you’re done adding content, click “Accept,” and then “Save.”
We can now click the preview button again and look at how our page will appear once published. When you are happy with your changes, and want to publish your page, click the “Home” tab, then “Edit,” and then “Publish.”
In order to see the live page, right-click on the item in the content tree on the left, select “Copy Item Url,” and then select “Copy Live Url.”
Editing an existing page
In order to make changes to an existing page, select it in the content tree. Click the link that reads “Lock and edit.” In Sitecore, whenever you are editing an item, you have to lock it first, to make sure that no one else is editing the same item at the same time.
I’m going to go ahead and make some changes to the text, using the “Show Editor” link. When you are done making changes, hit “Save.” At this point, you can “check in” the item after saving, in order to have the changes visible on a staging version of the page before being published, while also being made available to other users for editing. Otherwise, leave it locked. To view the changes you have made, either click the “Publish” tab and then “Preview,” or, right-click on the item, select “Copy Url,” and then click “Copy Staging Url.” The staging URL will have the same structure as the live URL, except instead of spu.edu you will see sitecoremaster.spu.edu. These staging links are only visible to users logged into Sitecore.
I’m going to use the “Preview” option (Publish tab > Preview), as it’s fewer clicks, and I can see that the changes I have made look how I want them to. Now, I’m going to go back into the content editor, click the “Home” tab, click “Edit,” and then select “Publish.” I can copy the live page URL using right click, “Copy Url,” and then “Copy Live Url.” Once I paste that value into a new browser window, I can double-check that my changes have been published.