The Escenic Publication Model

The Content Engine has its own idea of how a web site or publication is structured, called the publication model. All Escenic publications are based on this publication model and therefore have the same basic structure, which is reflected in Content Studio.

An Escenic publication is made up of content and sections. Content is the actual information that makes up your publication: news articles, images, multimedia objects (audio and video files) and so on. The individual articles, images and so on are collectively referred to as content items. Sections are the subdivisions of the publication in which the articles appear and correspond approximately to the sections of a print newspaper or magazine. The menu system displayed in an Escenic publication is usually based directly on the publication's section structure.

A publication must have one top section that corresponds to the whole publication, and each section may contain 0 or more subsections. The sections therefore form a tree structure like the folders in a computer file system.

A content item can belong to one and only one section, which is called its home section. However, a content item may appear in many sections. A news article concerning a football transfer, for example, might belong to the sports section of a newspaper, but appear in both the sports and business sections. A content item's home section determines its published appearance: this article will look like a sports article even for users who arrive from the newspaper's business section. The home section also determines part of the content item's URL, so if you change a content item's home section then its URL will also change.

A section has one or more section pages which contain links to some of the content items in the section. One of these section pages is the section's active page, and is displayed whenever a reader of the publication clicks on a link to the section. The active page is, in other words, a kind of "front page" for the section. Although a section may have many section pages, only one of them can be active at any particular time. This enables editors to have alternative section pages ready for activation and switch between them instantaneously. It can be a useful means of preparing for alternative outcomes to upcoming events such as elections and sporting competitions.

The links on a section page are called teasers. A teaser is a summary, and usually rather more than a link. A typical teaser might consist of an article headline, some summary text describing the content of the article, a thumbnail image and a "read more.." link. A publication will normally have a number of different teaser types ("large", "medium" and "small", for example).

The teasers are laid out on a section page in a grid layout. A grid layout is a set rectangular areas, each of which has a predefined location and size and can contain a predefined number of teasers. The areas in a grid layout have names which usually describe their location on the page or their intended content ("top stories", "left" "center" and "right", for example).

Teasers can be organized in groups. Teaser groups can then be placed in areas in the same way as single teasers.

Content items can be interrelated in various ways. An image or video clip, for example, can be made to appear in a news article by relating it to the article. Lists of "related article" links can be generated in the same way.