Each page of your website is made up of a variety of what we refer to as "content items." A content item could be anything -- a single paragraph, an image, a combination of text and images, a form or even an embedded video. Understanding the difference between a content item and a page should help you create well-designed pages without knowledge of HTML or other web languages.

You can think of a content item as a block of text. For example, the welcome module on the IAAP Web Community home page is a single content item:


If you look around the home page, you can see that there are about 10 different content items that make up just the home page. It's possible a page on your site could contain just one content item, and for inside pages that might be quite common, but for pages (like your home page) that you likely want to display a variety of information, creating multiple content items is the easiest way to do that.

For example, here's what the main community home page looks like in the CMS Navigation/Content view. You can see on the left we have highlighted the Home folder, which houses all of the content on our home page. On the right are all of the different content items that make up the home page.


In the image above, also note the numbers (1 or 2) adjacent to each content item. Because our home page is setup with a two-column layout, the numbers identify which column the content item appears in. The first content item we'll take a look at is listed as "Member Spotlight 2." The web community home page content is made up of two columns. You'll notice that the Member Spotlight is the first thing that appears in the right column. That is because Member Spotlight is the first content item listed that has a 2 next to it.

Still looking at the image above, if you look below the list of content items with 2 next to them, you will see all of the content items that appear in the left column, or 1 column. The first one listed is the "Welcome to the IAAP Web Community 1" content item. That means it will display first on the home page. The other 1 content items will appear in the order they are listed. This is important to remember when organizing content items on a page. You can always cut and paste content items to move them around.

To change which column a content item appears in, you will need to open the content item and change which section it appears in:


Notice also you can choose to "Hide this content item." This is handy if you want to remove something from a page but not delete it completely. If you look at the content list above, you'll notice the first content item listed is called "TEST 1." The reason this content item does not appear on our home page is because we have chosen to hide that content item. If we were to unhide it, that content item would appear first in the left column because it is the first content item listed for that column.

If you create a new content item and do not see any numbers next to it in your content list, don't worry. This means your page is setup as a one-column layout and therefore does not need a number to identify which column it appears in.

For example, take a look below at what our Chapters/Division page looks like in the Navigation/Content view. You'll see neither of the two content item listed to the right have numbers next to them. That is because this is a one-column layout.