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How the CMS Works

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OpenCities Product Team

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We've built this CMS platform to have a robust framework with components that work together to create beautiful sites.

Our templates use a lightweight, fluid, and mobile-first grid framework to control the layout between different breakpoints, and a variety of out-of-the-box and third-party plugins. These aspects help your website's content and design easily adjust to various devices, providing the best possible experience for your users.

Our components will always have the OC prefix. They are locked and can't be edited, but some aspects of components are open to edit. You can build a beautiful website using only out-of-the-box components, but you may see things on other Granicus sites (including our demo environment, Point Russell) that use custom themes, CSS, or other components. If you have developers on staff, you can create your own custom work but you will be in charge of maintaining them and troubleshooting. The OC prefix is reserved and can't be used on any of your custom builds.

Before you start developing, you must understand the following about the CMS framework:

  1. Each page or file has a content type that consists of fields.
  2. A field is an individual data element and there are multiple types for different purposes.
  3. Fields use templates to determine how they are rendered wherever they are used. Each field has a default template, and you can create additional ones, allowing you to repurpose fields and display the same field in different ways.
  4. Content types are made up of multiple fields and can also have multiple templates built using different combinations of field templates.
  5. Each page can only be one content type and use one template at a time.
  6. Themes are layered onto every element to control how your site looks.

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