Get started with Classic CMS

The Classic Content Management System (CMS) within the Optimizely Configured Commerce platform was built from the ground up with robust options to give you greater control over the content displayed on a website. This content can be targeted to users of a specific audience based on their language, device, or persona and placed within pages created from scratch or from templates. The following sections provide a brief overview of each component.

Users who want to make use of Classic must be logged in to the Admin Console with either ISC_ContentAdmin, ISC_ ContentApprover, or ISC_ContentEditor roles.

Classic CMS took the paradigm introduced with the Device, Language, and Persona settings and brought it to the next level. It lets you have specific sets of content for your users based on any combination of Language, Persona, and Device defined within Configured Commerce.

Although content can be edited and approved/published within any of the CMS sections, the Content Library (Library > Content) provides both Content Editors and Content Approvers with a single workspace to manage, preview, and approve content revisions.

The Classic CMS Workflow feature lets Content Editors and Content Approvers work together within the Admin Console to create, manage, and stage content for display on the website.

The two-tiered workflow enables a Content Editor to create and edit content throughout the website, but it requires approval from a Content Approver before the content is displayed to the public. Both Content Editors and Content Approvers can preview unpublished content directly on the site to ensure that the content displays as expected.

During the approval process, content approvers have the option to specify a date and time for when the content is published, empowering site administrators to stage content ahead of time.

The Content Tree lets you visualize the modifiable content that exists on your website. This tree lets you access content for your Homepage, content that exists across all pages on your website (such as your Header and Footer), and the content managed sections that exist on the predefined content templates. The Content Tree is made of four distinct areas: Home, Header, Footer, and Predefined Content.

Content like pictures and documents on your website is important, and so is managing it. Configured Commerce includes utilities to upload files (such as product images) to your website and ways to manage and organize that content.

Themes are comprised of styles, scripts, views, widget templates, and theme resources that define how a website displays. While Configured Commerce includes a Themes & Content section, accessible to high-level Console users, Optimizely recommends creating themes in Visual Studio and pointing them to the Admin Console through the website's Theme field. A theme with missing or poorly executed elements can break the site, so Optimizely customers should discuss theme management with their implementation partner before making changes.