Introduction to Contentful
Contentful is where the words and pictures on the site are written and kept. You edit content there; the website reads it and shows it to visitors. You do not need to touch any code.
How it works
Contentful keeps content separate from design. You fill in a form — a heading, some text, a picture — and the website decides how that looks on a phone, a tablet and a desktop. The same content can appear in more than one place, and you only have to change it once.
Because content and design are separate, there is no page to lay out by hand. Instead you choose which sections a page is made of, and put them in the order you want.
Words you will see
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Space | One brand's content, kept separate from every other brand. Each DERTOUR Group site has its own space. |
| Environment | A copy of a space. Work in progress happens in one environment; the live site reads from another, so unfinished changes do not reach visitors. |
| Content type | A blank form that decides what can be filled in. For example, a hotel card form has a name, a picture and a short description. Developers create these. |
| Entry | One filled-in copy of that form. A content type called 'Hotel card' can have hundreds of entries — one per hotel. |
| Field | A single box on the form: a heading, a price, a date, a tick box, or a link to another entry. |
| Reference | A field that points at another entry instead of holding text. This is how a page is built out of sections, and how the same section is reused on more than one page. |
| Asset | A picture or file that entries can use. Assets are stored once and can be used by many entries. |
| Rich text | A text field that allows formatting — bold, links, bullet points — rather than plain words only. |
Draft, published, changed
Every entry and every picture carries a status. Saving is not the same as publishing: your work is kept as soon as you save, but it only reaches the site when you publish it.
Never been published. Only visible to editors.
Live on the site. What visitors see.
Published once, then edited. The site still shows the older published version until you publish again.
Taken out of use but not deleted. Can be brought back.
Where Contentful sits in the platform
Not everything on a page comes from Contentful. Prices, availability and the core product details come from other systems and appear on the page automatically. Contentful holds the parts the team writes and chooses: headings, descriptions, tips, and which picture to use.
What is in this guide
| Page | Covers |
|---|---|
| Introduction | What Contentful is and the words you need to know. |
| The home page | Every section of the home page: what a visitor sees, which field changes it, and how to edit it. |
| The search results page | The search bar, the tabs, the filters and the sort: which of them you own, and which belong to the live search. |
| The hotel detail page | One template drives every hotel page. Each band of it, and what is ePIM's rather than yours. |
| Content types | Every kind of content on the site, what each one is for, and its fields. |
Getting started soon | Signing in, finding your way around, and setting up your view. |
Creating and editing content soon | Making an entry, filling in fields, and saving your work. |
Images and files soon | How pictures are chosen and where they come from. |
Building a page soon | Putting sections together to make a page. |
Publishing and previewing soon | Checking your work before it goes live, and putting it live. |
Seeing the sections for yourself
The Component Playground shows every section of the site on its own, with controls to change its content and watch the result. It is a useful way to see what a field you are filling in will actually do.