Content Model

(This document is also available as a PDF download.)

ExSite is built in layers:

4	Plug-in Modules (optional components with their own custom interfaces)
3	Plug-in Frameworks (optional shared data models, like Finance)
2	CMS (general-purpose tools for displaying web content)
1	Kernel (general-purpose tools for managing data & security, as well as the back-end admin system)

ExSite v4 is primarily an overhaul of layer 2, the CMS. This documentation covers the changes in the CMS layer. For other v4 changes in other layers, see the ExSite 4 Developers Guide.

Some of the disadvantages of v3 content model that we are trying to address with v4 are:

• core content management (for example, translations, revision control, etc.) was limited to normal pages, and not available to other similar content types like articles, products, or events. This often meant that features had to be reinvented when needed for other content types (eg. translations in forms).
• certain types of DB queries were slow due to the data types used in the revision table
• over-reliance on dynamic content views for anything that was not core content (=slow)

The v4 "content" object is a much more abstracted object that can serve as a section, page, or content object, plus various other types of object (such as articles, products, events, and so on). Any content that can fit this model can make use of the core content management features such as publishing/static delivery, indexing, menuing, translations, revision control, templating, metadata, security, access controls, and workflows.