After the general introduction to the Content Editor, I want to show the functionality of the Home ribbon.
This blog post is available in German and English to help as many people as possible.
Enough talk, let’s jump in!
The Home Ribbon
We again start in the Content Editor, mark an item and switch to the Home ribbon in case it is not selected. The Home ribbon groups common operations for content authors. Many of these operations are also readily available with a right click on an item.
Note that some of the buttons have additional functionality when you click the triangle instead of the central button area.
Let us go through the ribbon buttons to see what functionality it offers.
- Save
Saves the current item. Sitecore supports keyboard commands, so you can also use CTRL+S. Note that Sitecore only actually saves the item if anything changed. - Edit
When you are not an admin, you have to lock an item to make changes. This is to prevent overriding when multiple authors work on the same item. Note that checking out an item actually does save the item. - Insert
Insert allows you to create an item under the current one. If you are no admin, you can only insert items with templates defined by the administrator. - Duplicate
Duplicates or clones an item. If you don’t know what a clone is you probably want to duplicate, which creates a new item and copies the content of the current one. - Copy to and Move to
These are just shortcuts for convenience. You can also duplicate and drag & drop to achieve the same. - Delete
Deletes the item. Naturally all subitems are deleted as well.
There is also the functionality of deleting subitems of the current item, which can come in pretty handy. I will describe the process in more details later. - Rename and Change Display Name
Changes name and Display name of the item. I will describe those in more detail later. Renaming an item can also be achieved using the F2 key. - Sorting
Quick access to typical sorting functionality. I will also describe this in more detail later.
Deleting items
Deleting items is actually more complex than you might think. Sitecore tries to keep its data consistent so it will warn you about something that is called broken links. To demonstrate that, I will try to delete the Getting Started item under Local Content in the Habitat site.
After confirmation Sitecore will tell you to break links. Sitecore keeps track of all crosslinking between items in your content. Other items reference this one, so deleting it would lead to a broken link somewhere else.
There are four options to correct this issue:
- Remove links
The links to this item are simply removed wherever it is referenced. This can be an easy solution if no functionality depends on this item being present. - Link to another item
Sitecore will ask you to specify another item. All references to the current item are replaced with the selected one. Imagine you delete a call to action which could be used all over your website. Simply select a new one to make sure you don’t have any empty areas in your website. - Leave links
Sitecore will leave the links, which are broken afterwards. This could lead to issues in other parts of your website, so you should exactly know what you are doing. - Edit Links
This shows you a list of all the items that actually link to the current item. You can then handle the broken links on a per-item basis.
If you delete the item and leave the links, you can see the broken links in the Quick Action Bar.
What if you accidentally deleted an item? There is a way to restore it, which is called Recycle bin. You can open it from the Launchpad (if you have the rights).
The Recycle bin contains a list of all deleted items ordered by the time of deletion, newest first. To restore an item, select it and click Restore.
The item is restored. Since we did not remove the links when we deleted the item, all references are correct again. If you removed the links, you will have to reestablish them manually.
Deleting Subitems
Within the ribbon, you can also delete all subitems of the current item. Note that this can get very slow for many items. If you need to delete a lot of items, contact you administrator, who can perform this task much more efficiently.
Rename and Change Display name
There is quite some confusion about the difference between the name and the display name of an item, so let us start with some clarification. The Name or Item Name is a technical name for the item. It is shared, which means it cannot differ between languages and it cannot be versioned. To overcome these limitations, Sitecore has something that is called Display Name. If a display name is set and different from the item name, Sitecore shows both.
Both Item name and Display name should be unique per level!
Sorting
Sitecore will render your content in order, in other words the item order matters. Sitecore allows you to drag and drop to reorder items, but this is often tedious since drop zones are tiny.
It is typically easier to reorder items using the Sorting buttons in the Home ribbon.
Subitems Sorting
There is a more advanced sorting tool that is available through right-click on the parent item → Sorting → Subitems Sorting.
By default, Sitecore orders items in alphabetical order. In this case, the order is changed manually, so let’s reset the order to default. To do so, simply hit Reset and confirm.
Note that once you hit Reset, the sorting is applied, so hitting Cancel wont actually cancel the sorting.
There are different sorting mechanisms you can choose from. Select them in the dropdown to see a preview of the ordered result and hit Reset to apply.
That’s all folks!
So much for the introduction to the Home ribbon. Find the third article about the Navigate ribbon here.
