Solution Overview for Business Users / Version 2506.0
Table Of ContentsRequirements
Websites are structured into different sections. These sections frequently form a tree hierarchy. For example, a news site might have a Sports section with a Basketball subsection. The website of a bank might have different sections for private and institutional investors with the latter having subsections for public and private institutions.
Sections are also often called "navigation" or "context". Usually the sections of a site are displayed as a navigable hierarchy (a "navigation" or "site map"). The current location within the tree is often displayed as a "breadcrumb navigation".
Additionally, efficient content management requires reuse of content in different contexts.
For example, reusage of an article for a different section, a mobile site or a micro site should not require inefficient and error-prone copying of that article.
Solution
A site section (or "navigation" or "context") is represented by a content item of type
CMChannel or CMExternalChannel which is a child of
CMChannel. Sections span a tree hierarchy through the child relationships of
CMChannel#children. If a CMChannel is referenced by a
CMSite item it is considered a root channel, that is an entry into a channel
hierarchy representing a website. The CMChannel content items fulfill the following
purposes:
Hierarchy: They form a hierarchy of site sections which can be displayed as a navigation, sitemap, or bread crumb. Each site consists of exactly one section tree.
Context: They function as contexts for content. Content can be reused within different contexts in different layouts and visual appearance. For example, an article's layout may differ in a company's blog section from its layout in the knowledge base.
Page: Each
CMChannelcan be rendered as an overview page of the section it represents. Therefore, theCMChannelcontains information about the page structure (the "grid") for this overview page and the pages generated when content items are displayed in the content of theCMChannel.Configuration:
CMChannelcontent items contain settings which configure various aspects of the site section they represent. EachCMChannelcan override parent configuration by defining its own layout settings, content visibility, and other context settings. If for example, the "News" section of a site is configured for post-moderation of comments this configuration can be overwritten to premoderation in the subsection "News/Politics".
