Other Content Options

Here are some options and tools that you can use to enhance your content and user experience.

Localizing Content

When you create a new web content article, you can choose a default language. First, you must change the system configuration to enable the option to change the default language.

1. Go to the Control Panel → System Settings.

2. Locate Web Content → Administration by scrolling or using the search bar.

3. Check the box labeled Changeable Default Language.

4. Click Save.

You must now add translations for any languages you need. Adding translations works like this:

1. Open a web content article.

2. Click the flag icon with a country code on it next to any localizable web content field.

3. Select a language from the list.

When you select a language, all fields in the article switch to the new language. To create the new translation, fill in the fields in the selected language and publish the article.

Figure 1: Adding a translation to an article works like adding the default translation.

Note: To view localizable fields in a given language, you must have your Portal set to that language. This includes friendly URLs for the web content as well. When you navigate to the localized friendly URL (e.g. http://localhost:8080/web/guest/-/espanol), the web content is always displayed in the current language. You can change the language with the Language Selector app.

You can modify the language translation list by inserting locales.enabled= followed by your preferred languages in your portal-ext.properties file. For example, locales.enabled=ar_SA,nl_NL,hi_IN offers Arabic (Saudi Arabia), Dutch (Netherlands), and Hindi (India).

Warning: If you switch your Site’s default language (e.g., via friendly URL), but do not have the necessary translations for localizable fields, your Site’s language values are used from the old default language. Therefore, you should change the default language of your Site only when you have translated values for all localizable entities.

When you create a new web content structure, each field you create has a Localizable checkbox displayed next to it. This enables you to control what can and can’t be changed in the translation process. For example, if you don’t want images or content titles to be changed when the content is translated, you can make sure those fields aren’t llocalizable. When you follow the steps above to localize content, only fields within the structure that had the Localizable box checked appear within the translation window.

Xuggler for Embedding Video

Xuggler is a tool which generates video previews and makes it possible to embed videos from your Documents and Media library in web content and elsewhere on the site. To enable Xuggler,

1. Navigate to the Control Panel.

2. Click on Configuration → Server Administration → External Services.

3. Scroll to the bottom and click Install in the Xuggler section.

   This downloads the necessary libraries and prompts you to restart the server to enable Xuggler.

4. After the server restarts, you can enable Xuggler from the same page.

Once Xuggler has been installed and enabled, you can embed a video or audio file in a web content article the same way you added images previously.

Figure 2: If you've installed and enabled Xuggler from the *Server Administration* → *External Tools* section of the Control Panel, you can add audio and video to your web content!

XML Format Downloads

Tools like the Resource Importer and Site Initiators can be deployed to build a site almost instantly. Before you can use them to import Web Content, however, you first need to have the content exported individually in XML format. To export the content,

1. Go to Site Administration → Content → Web Content.

2. Start editing the article you want to download.

3. Click the Options icon () in the top right of the page and select View Source.

This displays the raw XML source of the article. You can copy this content to save into an XML file locally.

Figure 3: The *View Source* button is available from the *Options* button.

Subscribing to Content

An administrator or web content writer can subscribe to an article or folder to follow changes being made to it.

1. Go to Content → Web Content for your Site.

2. Click Options () → Subscribe next to the article or folder you want to follow.

Anytime an asset that you follow is modified, you receive an email notifying you of the change.

Figure 4: Click the Subscribe icon in the web content entity's *Options* menu to begin receiving web content notifications.

That’s pretty much all there is to basic content creation. Whole sites have been created this way. But if you want to take advantage of the full power of Liferay DXP’s WCM, you’ll want to use structures and templates or Fragments. You’ll cover these topics next.

Organizing Structure Names

By default, when you select a structure to add a new Web Content article, the structures are ordered by their IDs, not their names. This can be confusing, but—never fear—there’s a configuration property to sort them alphabetically.

Figure 5: The default ordering for Web Content Structures can yield confusing results.

To enable this property for Site Administration,

1. Go to Configuration → System Settings → Web Content → Web Content Administration.

2. Check the box labeled Journal Browse by Structures Sorted by Name.

Figure 6: Web Content Administration will now display structures in alphabetical order.

With Liferay DXP 7.1 Fix Pack 2 or greater, you can also set this property for the Web Content Display widget. To enable this property for the Web Content Display,

1. Go to Configuration → System Settings → Web Content → Web Content Display.

2. Check the box labeled Sort Structures by Name.

Figure 7: The Web Content Display widget will now display structures in alphabetical order.

After this option is checked, the structures are sorted alphabetically. Note that enabling this property can degrade performance with large structure libraries.