Manage content types from the UI

8 min

Setting up an Optimizely Content Management System (SaaS) instance through the UI lets you efficiently configure your content without coding. Starting from the basics, you can create content types, define properties, and build content directly within CMS (SaaS). This method offers an accessible way to tailor your content model to your specific needs, making it easier to manage and publish content. By leveraging the intuitive UI, you can set up a fully functional CMS (SaaS) instance that is ready for content creation and deployment.

Content is the primary resource type of CMS (SaaS). Content can represent webpages, components, media, and almost any other type. A content item holds data in a structured way described by a schema defined by the content type. Every content item is an instance of a content type. See Content.

Before creating your first content item, you define a content type. A content type describes a content item's characteristics and data model schema. But, before you create your content types, you must develop a content model. Content modeling helps provide a "framework" for how your content is structured in CMS (SaaS). See Content model.

Create a content type

In the CMS (SaaS) UI, go to Settings > Content Types.

Select Create New > Page Type.

On the Create New Page Type page, enter examplePage in the Name field, enter Example page in the Display Name field, and click Create.

Configure a property for your content type. Properties store and present data, such as page types and block types, and they are fields where CMS (SaaS) editors enter information into a page type. See Properties.

Click Add property and select Text from the drop-down list.

Enter Heading in the Name field.

Select String (<= 255) from the Text Type drop-down list.

Select Content from the Property Group drop-down list.

Click Save.

See content types.

Create a page

To create a content item of the page type that you just created:

On the Edit page, open the content tree in the Navigation panel. Click Pin to keep it open.

On the Root node, select More > New Page.

Enter Hello, everyone! in a Heading field.

Click Publish? > Publish.

Define a website and host

Go to Settings > Applications.

Click Create Website Application and add a name.

Select From Existing under Choose Start Page and click on the Hello World! page you created as your start page.

Click Create Website.

Important If you change the website's URL or host, you must run an Optimizely Graph Full Synchronization scheduled job. See Scheduled jobs.

Run the Optimizely Graph synchronization job

Before you can access the content externally, sync the content to Optimizely Graph.

Go to Settings > Scheduled Jobs and start the Optimizely Graph Full Synchronization.

Retrieve content using Optimizely Graph

Go to Optimizely Graph in the top menu to retrieve your page using a GraphQL query.

Add the following query in the GraphiQL interface:

query myQuery {
  examplePage {
    items {
      Heading
    }
  }
}

Click Execute query or press Cmd or Ctrl + Enter.

The result is similar to the following.

{
  "data": {
    "examplePage": {
      "items": [
        {
          "Heading": "Hello, everyone!"
        }
      ]
    }
  },
  "extensions": {
    "correlationId": "8ac0127cda8c6be9",
    "cost": 21,
    "costSummary": [
      "examplePage(21) = limit(20) + fields(1)"
    ]
  }
}

See Retrieve content using Optimizely Graph.

Create a complete site

After you see the basic components in action, you can build your front end using CMS (SaaS).

For a demonstration that uses Vercel to host your front end, see Create a demo site using CMS (SaaS) and Vercel.