Document Types
Data first
nothing in = nothing out!
Step 1 of any site is to create a "Document Type" – after a few installations you’ll become familiar with this terminology but at the start it might be a little bit bewildering. A Document Type is a data container in Umbraco where you can add Properties (data fields/attributes) where an editor can input data. Umbraco will output this data to the relevant part of a "Template" (more on these later).
Document Types are infinitely extendable but usually you’ll add the following common properties:
- Page title
- Sub Heading
- Body Text
- Meta Title
- Meta Description
- ...
Each Property has a Data Type - e.g. a text string or a number or rich text body... we’ll come to this later.
Creating your first Document Type
Right, let’s get busy. Go to the Settings Menu in Umbraco. This is the third button on the top menu. Then you’ll see a long list of settings – don’t worry about these yet, we’ll introduce them as we need them.
Document Types is positioned as the first option in the list and is always the starting point for any Umbraco build. Hover over the [Document Types] item and you’ll see three dots [...] , click this to see the menu. Then you'll get four options, click the [Document Type] option - we want a template automatically created for us.
Using folders can help you organise your Document Types.
Enter "HomePage" as the [Name] of our new Document Type - you'll see that an Alias is automatically created for us.
Enter in the [Description] field "This is our homepage template". This text is used to help the editors choose the correct Document Type when creating new Content Nodes.
Click [Save] to store our new DocumentType.
Our new Document Type is now visible as a new item in the Settings Tree under [Document types]. Now we're going to give this Document Type an icon to help our editors when they will be working with multiple Document Types in the Content Tree. Click the white document icon next to the name field, enter "home" into the search field that appears and select the house icon.
Next, click the [Permissions] icon and check [Allow as root]. This will allow us to create a homepage at the root of the Content Tree.
If none of your Document Types have the [Allow as root] checked, all of them will be allowed to be created at the root level.
Next, we go back to the Design screen. Create a new group called "Content" (remembering to click [Save] after).
Now click on the [Add property] link – this is where we can create each of the necessary data containers in which the editors can enter the necessary content for the homepage. Enter the [Name] "Page Title". When you move to the next field you’ll see Umbraco helpfully gives you the alias "pageTitle". Click the [Add editor] link and you'll see a long list of editors, select the "Textbox".
Remember to come back and explore this list of data types later - it's a hint to the power of Umbraco.
Umbraco will generate a long name for the Data type - ignore this for now and select Submit.
Now you can enter a [Description], again helps the editor provide relevant content so we'll fill this in "The main title of the page (e.g. Welcome to Widgets Ltd)".
Ignore the rest of the fields for now and click the green [Submit] button at the bottom right.
Repeat this step, clicking the [Add property] at the bottom of the [Content] group and create the following properties:
| Name | Body Text |
|---|---|
| Alias: | bodyText |
| Type: | Richtext editor (use the search to help you find this, leave all the options as default and click Submit) |
| Tab: | Content |
| Description: | The main content of the page. |
| Name | Footer Text |
|---|---|
| Alias: | footerText |
| Type: | Textbox |
| Tab: | Footer (remember to add this!) |
| Description: | Copyright notice for the footer. |
Use the [Add group] link to create a new group called Footer for the Footer Text.
You should now have a Document Type that looks like this:
We’ve now created our first Document Type – Umbraco needs three things to create a webpage and this is the first and most important. It takes the data inside an instance of the Document Type (aka a Content Node) and merges it with a Template – we’ll create our template next.
Next - Creating Your First Template and Content Node
How to create your first template and create a content node.