Content entry points

Authors and editors can create and edit content in Tridion Sites in multiple ways.

To create and edit content, use one of the browser-based user interfaces.

The recommended user interface to use is Experience Space. However, for certain features, you may still need to fall back on the Classic user interfaces:
  • Experience Manager, a WYSIWYG interface, which lets you edit your staging content in-line on the published staging site.
  • Content Manager Explorer, a traditional, webform-based GUI.
Additionally:
  • Authors can leverage the External Content Library (ECL for short) to pull in content from other repositories.
  • You can use the APIs on the content management side to extend the existing GUIs, build a custom GUI from scratch, or create integrations with back-end systems.
Experience Space: the new user interface for managing and editing content
Experience Space is intended as a replacement for the Classic interfaces, and is the recommended interface for all tasks that don't require the Classic interface, which is the majority of authoring and content management tasks. The Experience Space user interface is superior to the Classic user interfaces in a variety of ways.
Experience Manager: the Classic in-context editing user interface

Most authors use the integrated inline page editor, Experience Manager, to perform in-context editing directly on a staging website.

WYSIWYG authoring enables editing directly within the context of your website. Experience Manager enables content authors to change text, update images and add widgets on the webpage directly. These activities take place on a staging or preview environment.

Step-by-step wizards make it easier to create new pages and content items. Modifying or rearranging content on a page is simply a matter of dragging and dropping.

Content Manager Explorer: the Classic interface for power users

Technical users access the Content Manager Explorer interface for more advanced web content management tasks, including application management, Publication management, Template management and more. This interface provides a granular view of Tridion Sites functionality.

The slide-out navigation plane in both Experience Manager and Content Manager Explorer lets you switch easily between the two, or even switch to other RWS user interfaces.

You can also extend the user interfaces by adding controls to the existing views, such as tabs, buttons and menu options. JavaScript code specifies when these controls should be enabled, and what functionality is triggered when they are selected. You can modify the behavior of existing functionality by intercepting and changing requests sent to, or response sent from, Tridion Sites.

The Tridion Sites repository can also be accessed through WebDAV by using WebDAV-compliant applications such as Adobe Dreamweaver and Microsoft Visual Studio, for template creation and management by developers and designers.