Content types

A website might contain many kinds of content, such as informational pages, news items, blogs articles, personal profiles, event announcements, etc. In Mosaic, each piece of content (i.e. each page on the site) belongs to a single ‘content type’, which defines various default settings for pages of that type, such as whether the page includes a job title (e.g. on an academic’s profile page), or whether a venue is associated with it (e.g. on a page advertising an event).

There are four principal ‘types’ of content in Mosaic: Article, Event, Person, and Page. Each of these types is distinguished by the type of metadata associated with it (e.g. all ‘Events’ will have a location and a start date), and within each content type are 'content sub-types'.

A content sub-type is an instance of the parent content type. For example, in the content types screenshot above, the Article content type includes three ‘sub-types’ (News; Blog; Article). Each of these sub-types is identical to the other two – only the title of each sub-type is different.

Within content types are content sub-types. When a Mosaic site is provisioned, 12 default content sub-types are provided (see the table below). Content sub-types can be added and removed using the options on the Content types screen.

What are content sub-types used for?

When content is created on a site, it must be created using one of the content sub-types that exist on the site. This means that as soon as a page is created, it belongs to one of the content types. This then means that the page can be managed using the full range of the Mosaic toolkit’s functionality.

Content creation

Content can be created in two ways on Mosaic: using a template and using your own configuration. Both of these methods involve content sub-types.

Using a template

Templates provide a useful way to consistently create content with identical page layouts and metadata fields. No templates exist on a Mosaic site by default; they must be created by a Site Owner or Site Administrator. When a template is created, it is defined within a content sub-type, for example, the 'My news article template' in the screenshot below has been created under the 'News' sub-type, which is an instance of the 'Article' content type.

As a result, all content created using this template will be allocated to the 'Article' content type and the 'News' sub-type.

Manage Content > Template creation screen

Using your own configuration

When content is created using your own configuration (in Manage Content > Content creation screen) ((1) in the screenshot below), the first action that needs to be taken is choosing which content sub-type it will belong to.

Manage Content > Create content screen

Filtering content

Belonging to a content type and sub-type provides a primary way to filter for content later on. This is useful for two contexts: creating listings of content on pages and searching for content in the Manage Content area of the site.

Content sub-types and listings

Carousel, Grid listing, List listing, and Slideshow (advanced) widgets allow content to be automatically displayed by the widget based on content type or content sub-type. This method of selection is known as 'Filtered' content selection.

Output on a Mosaic site: Grid listing filtered by 'Article' content type & 'News' content sub-type

Searching for content based on sub-type

Content can be searched for in the Manage Content > Content tab using the Content type filter (see below).

Manage Content > Content > Filter using content type

The four content types differ in the kinds of metadata associated with each one. The metadata for each piece of content can be viewed and configured on the 'Setup' tab (in Page content) or the 'Details' tab (in Article, Event, and Person content).

Article, Event, and Person content types contain all of the metadata fields that Page content uses but each of the former three also uses a set of content-specific metadata fields.

*Denotes mandatory fields.

Page content type

Page content has no unique metadata types associated with it and as a result can be considered the basic content type. This content type is commonly used for landing pages and informational pages.

Article content type

Article content includes the following metadata fields:

• Displayed Publication Date* - this date will appear on the rendered page and in the listing item for the article
• Author - this appears within the taxonomies section of the 'Details' tab

Event content type

Event content includes the following metadata fields:

• Event Date* - this date will appear on the rendered page and in listing items for the article
• Use Custom Date and Time - this is an editable text field for customising the date and time format
• Location - editable text field for the event location
• Event presenter - full text editor for inputting the details of the event presenter

Person content type

Person content includes the following metadata fields:

• Full name* - the person's name; this is equivalent to the 'Title' field for other content types
• Sort name* -  listings of people profiles order the listings alphabetically by sort name, therefore it is common to input sort names in [Surname Firstname] format
• Job title*
• Affiliation
• Role
• Telephone no.
• Email address 
• SSO ID - if the person has an Oxford SSO ID, they can be authorised to edit their profile without being added as user on the website. This can be done by entering the person's SSO ID and following the instructions beneath it
• Futher information - full text editor for inputting further information/biographical details about the person
• Photo - a profile image of the person. This will appear on the rendered page and in the listing item for the profile page