Control who can manage your headless website structure with Site View permissions

Just over three years ago, we launched Site View and our Nodes API to provide Contensis users with a way to manage the structure of their headless websites and ease the transition from a traditional, monolithic way of building websites to a more modern and flexible API-first approach.

In many ways, we were treading new ground. Then, and now, few – if any – headless or API-first CMS platforms provide an easy way to handle site structure and routing from within the user interface.

Site View was our way of marrying up the needs of content authors and developers. It was central to our vision of a platform for building modern websites and apps – a vision that has come to fruition with Blocks and the other features that make up our new deployment platform.

Today we're releasing a massive update to Site View that will give site owners granular control over the permissions that users have when managing content destined for your websites.

We're also introducing the first version of our new commenting functionality in entries, adding the ability to manage redirects from the Contensis interface and making a whole set of enhancements to some of the features introduced in the last Contensis release.

There's a lot to cover, so let's dive in.

Site View permissions

While Site View sped up the process of building large headless websites, the recurring theme in the feedback from you, our user community, was that entry-based permissions needed to be more powerful to handle the complexity of the devolved content management common in the largest enterprise organisations.

So, we've rebuilt Site View to give you complete control over who can create and manage content on your website. New Site View permissions allow you to finely tune access and determine where entries can be attached, detached, or replaced. You can now choose whether to allow authors to update node properties, such as slugs and display names. And you can manage advanced options like proxy assignment and renderers to achieve comprehensive control over your website's appearance and structure.

Limit which users can make changes to nodes

We all know how vital a logical information architecture (IA) is to the success of a website. You and your team have invested significant time in researching your users' needs and mental models, designing an appropriate IA, and implementing your site structure and navigation. The last thing you want is for authors to make ill-informed changes to that structure.

The previous version of Site View used an all-or-nothing approach to controlling user permissions – users could either make any change to all nodes in the Site View tree or make no changes at all. Whilst this meant site owners could restrict who could make changes, it also made it hard to devolve management of areas of your site to specific departments, teams or other groups of authors.

With the introduction of Site View permissions, you can now specify who can create, update, move and delete specific nodes in the Site View tree. You can assign each of these permissions separately and specify whether they apply to the selected node, the selected node and its descendants, or only the descendants of the selected node.

Control who can manage entries on specific nodes

Alongside specifying which users can make changes to nodes, you can now control who can manage the entries attached to those nodes.

New actions in the roles and permissions builder allow you to specify which users can manage, attach, detach, replace and add entries of specific types.

Let's say you want to make sure nobody ever attaches the wrong kind of entry to your homepage – or detaches the entry altogether. You can now do this by limiting the roles that have permission to manage entries on your root node and by restricting the content types that can be attached to that node.

Restrict the management of renderers and proxies

In the last Contensis release, we introduced the ability to assign Renderers and proxies to nodes. You can now control which users can update the render attached to a node and where proxies can be applied using Site View permissions.

Simplify your view of the Site View tree

Now all users can choose between being able to see all nodes in the Site View tree, regardless of whether they have permission to make changes to them, or they can choose a simplified view that displays only the nodes they have permission to change.

Get the path of a particular node through the Nodes API

We've also introduced a new Path property on the Nodes API to allow you to get the path of a particular node. And we've created a dedicated endpoint for moving nodes alongside a new webhook to understand when nodes have moved.

Commenting

Ensure effective collaboration by adding comments directly to specific fields within the entry editor. Engage in discussions, involve relevant individuals using the @mention feature, and facilitate feedback throughout your content workflow. Collaboration has never been easier.

Have you ever created an entry and wanted feedback on the wording of some copy? Maybe you’ve found yourself craving some input on your choice of image from a colleague who has an eye for a good photo?

We’ve now introduced commenting on entries for exactly those scenarios. When you’re not ready to send an entry onto the next stage of its workflow or submit it for review, you just want a second opinion or editorial advice, you can now start a discussion on fields in entries.

If you want to bring a specific colleague into the conversation, simply tag them using the @mention feature to notify them.

Redirects

For several years we've provided a separate SaaS dashboard for site owners to manage redirects for Contensis-powered sites.

You can now manage these in Contensis – allowing you to easily redirect visitors from outdated or non-existent URLs to relevant, up-to-date destinations.

So, whether you're migrating your website, restructuring your content, or simply updating page URLs, you can now effortlessly manage and maintain your redirects from a familiar interface.

Any redirects currently in your SaaS dashboard will be available in Contensis as soon as you upgrade. Rest assured that the current redirects dashboard will remain available until all Contensis customers have migrated to the latest release.

Other updates and improvements

Connect Contensis to over 5,000 apps with Zapier

Contensis is now connected to Zapier, allowing you to quickly create integrations between Contensis and your other favourite apps without writing code. This Zapier integration is currently in public beta. If you encounter any issues, or have suggestions for improvements, let us know on Contensis Slack.

Create new entries from your favourite content types

Favourited content types are now surfaced in the New entry split button, ensuring faster access to regularly used entries. Say goodbye to unnecessary navigation and save valuable time when creating content.

Visualise Proxies in Site View

Understand how content is served from different services by visualising where proxies have been attached in the Site View tree.

Log in to the Blocks preview toolbar using single sign-on

The block preview toolbar now supports logging in from Azure AD or ADFS single sign-on. Enjoy a seamless and integrated experience, accessing and managing Blocks effortlessly.

View Block discovery errors

We now surface discovery errors in the Block version listing, providing you with valuable information to help understand why a particular Block is failing.

Upgrade now

If you are a cloud customer, you can raise a support request today to schedule an upgrade to Contensis 15.5.

If you are currently using an on-premise version of Contensis, and want to find out more about moving to our cloud platform and how you could benefit from Site View , Blocks, and other new features, get in touch to arrange a call from your account manager.