publishing
Publishing
The Publishing page allows you to search trough previously created posts and to create a new post.
Searching Posts
The Publishing page allows you to search previously created posts by Title and / or Status and / or Author. To do so, use the filter at the top of the articles list. It is possible to search for articles by any combination of these filters and the search results refresh themselves as you craft your query.
In this example, we are searching for articles that contain 'Montreal' in their title and that currently have a status of Published, the Author field, here, is ignored
Article Status Description
This table describes all the different statusses a Lilium article can have and their meaning.
| Status Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Published | The article is currently publicly available on your website for anyone to view |
| Draft | The article has been created but is not yet ready for editing or publishing. It is most likely a work in progress. |
| Pending Review | The article has been submitted by its writer for their editor to review |
| Set Back to Draft | The article was previously published but has been unpublished. An article that has been Sent Back to Draft is no longer publicly available on the website. The article may be modified and published again. |
Creating a new post
There are multiple ways by which you can create a new post. You can :
- Use Lys's
#create article | postcommand
- Click on the Create New Article button that is at the first position of the articles list
Regardless of the method you use, you will see the New Article overlay. Simply write a title for you new article. If you've not decided of a definitive title for your new article yet, don't worry, you will be able to change it at any moment in the future.
Whenever you are ready to go, press the Create article button.
When your new article is created, you will be taken to the article editing page, see the Writing Content section
It's worth noting that whenever you create a new article, its status is automatically set to Draft.
Writing content
The article editing page is where you can write content for your article and edit it's attributes.
Inserting images, places and embeds
When writing content for the web, inserting media and embedding content from other websites is essential. Lilium CMS v4 offers a very convenient way of doing so. To insert an image, place or embed something into your article click the Individual Insert button in the text editor tools as shown here to bring up the Media Picker.
Inserting Carousels
Furthermore, Lilium CMS V4 introduces the possibility to insert carousels which are a way to group a variety of media and embeds.
To insert a carousel, click on the Insert Carousel button in the text editor tools as shown here to bring up the Carousel Picker.
A carousel can in fact contain an unlimited number of all possible types of embeds, so one carousel could, for instance, contain 2 images, 3 places, 1 Instagram embed and 1 Youtube embedded video.
Working With Media and Carousels
Any media you insert in an article using the Media Picker or the Carousel Picker is by default inserted at the position of your cursor. However it is easy to move any media type around within the article you are currently working on by dragging and dropping the media you want to move.
Article Fields
Other than the actual content which we already discussed, several other fields are available to you when you are crafting a new article. Those fields allow you to adapt your article to a wide variety of possible situations.
Description of article fields
| Field Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Title | The title of an article, this field is used by Lilium to automatically generate an SEO optimized URL |
| Subtitle | The subtitle is essentially the lead of the article. It's meant to catch the attention of the reader hence it's also used to provide the SEO optimized page description that appears in search engines. |
| Content | The content is determined by what you insert in the text editor. The content contains to the entirety of the paragraphs, images, embeds, carousels and advertisements that make up the body of your article. |
| Category | The category of your article could also be refered as the topic. It determines where on the website your article will appear and is also useful for SEO because it helps search engines understand more accurately what your article is about |
| Tags | Tags |
| Sticky article | If sticky, an article will always appear on the website's front page |
| Not Safe for Work | This flag indicateswhether or not the article is safe for readers to read in a public place like work or school. Your site's theme is responsible for deciding whether or not to indicate to the user that the current article is NSFW |
| Only Available via URL | This flag determines whether or not the article appears on the website. If this flag is set to True, the article is still available for anyone to view but it has to be accessed via it's URL directly as it won't appear on the website as a link a user can click |
| Sponsored Article | This flag indicates whether or not the current article is for a paid content campaign. Your site's theme is responsible for deciding whether or not to indicate to the user that the article is sponsored. Setting an article as sponsored grants you acces to more Sponsored Article Specific Fields |
| Featured Image | The cover image of your article. Your website's theme, again is responsible to display and style the featured image but this image will most likely appear at the top of the page, alongside the title and occupy a large portion of the reader's screen |
Sponsored Article Specific Fields
Those fields only become available for you to edit if you previously marked the article as being a sponsored one.
| Field Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Sponsored Campaign ID | An identifier for the paid campaign. This is merely a string and there is not required format so you can use whatever suits your needs |
| Use Sponsored Box | Tells the your website's theme whether or not to display the article as sponsored to the readers. Again, the theme has to decide to respect this setting or not. |
| Sponsored Box URL | The URL to which the Sponsored Box will redirect the user when he clicks it, if displayed. The sponsored box should most likely link to a social media or website of the client |
| Sponsored Box Content | A paragraph that will appear in the sponored box where you can describe the client's business |
| Logo | The client's logo to be displayed in the sponsored box |
Managing article state
To manage your article's state, use the controls available to you at the top right of the editing page, under the Manage section.
Packaging
Putting online
Removing a post From the Website
If you want to remove a published post from the website, access the article to be deleted via Lys or by searching it in the publishing page.
To manage an article's status, look for the controls located at the top right conrner of the publishing page under the Manage section. In order to unpublish the current article, open the dropdown menu as shown below and click the Unpublish button.
As stated in the Artice Status Description section, an article that has been sent back to draft may be published again.
Consequences of Unpublishing a Post
When you unpublish an article, the article is NOT destroyed so that no data is lost. Be careful, however, because unpublishing an article may have some consequences that you need to be aware of:
- The article is sent back to draft, meaning that it will no longer be publicly available on your website for readers to see.
- A reader that clicks on a link to the article that was posted when the article was still live on any external website (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit) will hit an HTTP 404 Not Found error.
- The article will no longer generate advertisement revenue
What About Cached Versions
In computing, cache refers to a component that sores data so that future requests for that data can be served much faster. Lilium heavily relies on the concept of caching articles to achieve its speed. More specifically, Lilium takes advantage of Google's AMP service to deliver content more efficiently to mobile users. This means, however that a version of each article lives on Google's servers. This cached version may be served by Google for up to 5 minutes after is has been unpublished from Lilium.
Discarding an article
In orderto discard an article, it has to be in either draft or sent back to draft status. This means that you can't directly discard a published article directly. To send an article back to draft, refer to the Removing a Post From the Website section.
Once the article has been unpublished, you can open the same dropdown from which you unpublished the article but you will instead see an option that is Destroy. Caution an article that is destroyed cannot be recovered!
Once you clicked Destroy, you will see a confirmation to confirm the operation.
Content Chains
Content Chains are a way to order a group of articles so that readers can read them in a logical order.
Searching Content Chains
To search trough the content chains, use the filters at the top of the page.
Those filters have the same behavior as the posts filters. You can search for content chains by Title and by Status.
Creating Content Chains
You can create a new content chain by:
Using Lys's ^#create chain` command
By clicking the '+' card that appears as the first element of the Content Chains List.
You will see the Content Chain creation overlay come up, indicate a Title and a Subtitle for your new content chain and hit the Create Button.
Editing a Content Chain
The Content Chain editing page allows you to
- Change the content chain's Title
- Change the content chain's Subtitle
- Change the content chain's Presentation Text
- Set the content chain's Featured Image
- Add and remove articles that compose the content chain's series
