The Basics

Navigation

Getting around Interface is easy through the top Navigation categories.

The Dashboard is a snapshot view of your Interface project. Learn more about the Dashboard here.

Content is the place to go to manage your project content. Here you can add, edit, hide or delete the content in your project. Read more about content management in the User Manual.

In the Structure section, you will find everything you need to set up the infrastructure of your project, including Pages and Models.

Data is where you can import content or export data.

Users and Role permissions are handled in Access. You can add or remove Users here, though any edits to a User profile is done by the User by logging in to the Account Center.

Also in your top navigation is the name of your Interface project (as was named when first signing up). There you can also sign out if ever necessary.

If you, as an individual User, are a part of any other Interface projects, you can also jump to those projects from the drop-down menu. (Be sure to save what you’re working on first!)

To jump around within Content items, use the middle column list. Once you select an item, you can get to any Associated items from the Association drop-down menu in the upper right corner.

Once you jump to an Association, you can use breadcrumb navigation to get back to the main Content item. Click on the item Title link in bright green (below shown: “The Basics”) to jump back.

Toolbar Menus

Actions for any items in Interface are streamlined through the toolbar menus, located in the black bar at the bottom of the browser window.

Content List
Use the toolbar menus at the bottom of your Content list to help you manage your content.

Sort – The Sort menu gives you options to sort your Content list in either ascending or descending order based on your chosen filter. For example, choosing “Title” with the up (^) arrow will sort your content based on the Title field in ascending order (alphabetically, A → Z). Your Sort order will be saved in your current session, but will re-set to the default order after you click out of this Content section (to change the default order, see “Reorganize” below). These sort options provide a simple and efficient method to find content for which you may not know the exact name, or for a number of items with properties in common.

Select + Action – The Select + Action menu lets you select multiple items in your Content list and/or perform actions to the selected items. For example, you can select all Draft content items and then set them all to Published. You can also select items one by one in the list (use the “option” button on a Mac, the “alt” button on a PC) and choose an action on just those items.

Search – The Search option is particularly handy if you have a lot of content in your list and need to find one (or a few) particular item(s). It will search automatically (just type in one or two characters and pause; it will start searching immediately) based on the display field.

Reorganize – This menu allows you to manually reorganize your list of content with a drag-and-drop feature. After you get your desired order, click “Save” in the lower right corner. While the “Sort” order doesn’t persist after you leave the current Content section, the Reorganize order is your default.

New – To add a new piece of content, select the + icon. You will get a new, blank form in the right column and can start adding information immediately.

Associated Content
You have similar options for managing your Associated Content as you can in the Content List. Options are: Select + Action, Search, Reorganize, and New.

Model Configuration
Once you add a new Model (or want to modify an existing one), the configuration toolbar along the bottom right frame (when you click into a Model in the middle column) gives you all the tools you need to customize each Model.

Columns – Add columns to your model through this tool. Learn about each column option in this User Manual entry. Columns added to a Model under Structure are fields on your corresponding Content form.

Associations – Once you have created a number of Models, you will want to make relationships, or Associations, between them. There are a number of different kinds of Associations, which you can learn more about here.

Form Elements – You can add a few elements for Users to aid with Content entry. Horizontal Separators and Headings can help organize forms and create sections. Add Text columns to provide instructions or notes for Users in Content entry.

Model Configuration – To edit attributes for the Model, click on the Model Configuration cog. A popover box gives options, including to re-name the model, that affect the entire Model. Options are:

• Nested – This option allows you to create nesting (Parent-Child relationships) for Content within a Model. This is useful for situations in which the Content is all related, but has a hierarchy you need reflected (i.e., You make a Model called “Shoe Categories.” When adding content, you can make a parent Category called “Boots” and then can nest child/sub-categories, such as “Women’s,” “Men’s,” “Kids,” “Outdoors,” “City”).
• Displayed in List – If you want the Model to show up in the Content list, you need to select this box. Sometimes a Model only makes sense in the context of being associated to another Model, so you would leave this unchecked; users can add content to the Model via the Associations link from related Model(s).
• Allow Public API Read – In order for the content in this Model to be available for the API to Read it, you must check this box. Get more info here about the Read API.
• Allow Public API Write – Selecting this option will allow the API to Write to your database (and show up in the Content section for that Model). Learn more about the Write API here.

Content Entry

WYSIWYG Editor
During Model set-up (or editing), you have the option to include a WYSIWYG formatting toolbar to any “Text” field. When that option is selected, the below toolbar will appear at the top of the text field. This toolbar provides short-cut formatting options for your text (you are still welcome to use Textile or HTML formatting if you prefer).

Most of the options are standard to word processing programs and include bold, italics, bullet points, and paragraph styles. Unique to the Web are Headline styles (H1, H2, H3, H4) and block quotes (Bq). Rendering styles of these options may depend on the styles defined in your templates.

To format text using the WYSIWYG editor, select the text (be it one word or a number of paragraphs) and click the corresponding button for the desired formatting. It will insert the appropriate Textile code so that your text will be formatted correctly on the front end.

Save Options
When you are adding or editing content, you have four options when “Saving” content.

As you add or change content, you will need to click the green “Save” button in the lower right corner of your window. This saves your current content and refreshes the window to reflect the “Save.”

There are also options that combine saving content with another action to give you more flexibility and/ or speed when entering content:

• Save and New: This option allows you to save the current content item and then automatically closes it and opens a blank form for you to add a new content item.
• Save and Duplicate: A huge time-saver when you are adding numerous items that have shared (duplicate) content, this option saves your current item and then opens a new, duplicate copy of the just-saved item. You can make any edits to the new item to distinguish it from the previous and then choose the appropriate “Save” option.
• Save and Close: If you have completed adding or changing the content of your current content item, you can select “save and close,” which will save the current item and close the content-entry form. You are then free to select another item from the list or navigate to another section.