Digital asset management
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Contensis stores every image, document, video, and audio file used across your project in a central asset library. Uploading a file once makes it available to every entry, component, and Canvas field in the project, and gives you one place to update it, tag it, and see where it is being used.
You'll find the asset library under Assets in the project sidebar.
What you can do with assets
- Upload assets to Contensis: add files individually or in bulk, and set their metadata as you go.
- Edit an asset: change an asset's metadata, or replace the underlying file.
- Download an asset: retrieve the original file.
- Understanding asset usage: see which entries link to an asset before you change or remove it.
- Archive and unarchive an asset: take an asset out of circulation without deleting it.
- Unpublish an asset: remove an asset from your published site.
- Delete and restore an asset: send an asset to the recycle bin, restore it, or remove it permanently.
- Bulk operations on assets: apply an action to many assets at once.
Archiving, unpublishing, and deleting
These three actions sound similar and do different things. The key difference is whether the action affects your live site, or only what you see inside Contensis.
| Action | Effect on your live site | Effect inside Contensis | Reversible? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unpublish | The asset is removed from the live site, wherever it is used. | The asset stays in the asset library and appears in the listing as normal. | Yes, by publishing it again. |
| Archive | None. The asset stays on the live site wherever it is already used. | The asset is hidden from the default views, so authors won't come across it when browsing or picking assets. Find it by ticking Archived under Publish status. | Yes, using Unarchive. |
| Delete | The asset is removed. | The asset moves to the recycle bin and no longer appears in the library. | Yes, using Restore, until it is permanently deleted. |
In short:
- Archive an asset when you want to stop authors using it from now on, without disturbing the pages it already appears on. This is the safe option for tidying up an asset library.
- Unpublish an asset when you want it gone from your live site. This affects published pages immediately.
- Delete an asset when you no longer want it at all.
How assets get published
You don't publish an asset on its own. Assets are published along with the entries that use them. When you publish an entry, any assets attached to it are published too.