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What is structured content?

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Anders
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Structured content is information that is organized and categorized based on a set of rules. In Paligo, these rules are defined by a customized version of the DocBook content model, which is a well-established standard for technical documentation. All of the content you create in Paligo is validated against the rules defined in the content model.

In Paligo, the structure consists of:

Diagram showing Paligo structured content. There is a box labelled Publication. Inside that are three boxes all labelled Topic. Inside each Topic box is an Elements box and a Components box.

  • Publication

    A publication represents the entire document that you want to publish, such as a user guide or a help center. Its structure contains references to all of the sections (topics) that you are going to include in the document.

    Publication structure. It is made up of a series of topics, which are arranged in a hierarchy, similar to a table of contents in a book.

  • Topics

    You write each section of your content inside a “container” called a topic.

    Close-up view of some topics in the Content Manager. There are separate topics for these sections: Add users, Grant permissions to users, Remove permissions from users, Remove users, Switch admin rights.

  • Elements

    Inside each topic, you need to add the structure for your content as well as the actual text, images, etc. You make the structure by adding elements. There are different elements for each type of content, for example, a para element for paragraphs and an itemizedlist for a bullet list.

    The elements are defined by a content model that is based on DocBook.

    A topic's structure as shown in the XML tree view. There is a section element at the top. Inside that there is a title element, a para element, and a procedure element. Inside the procedure element there are a series of step elements.

    Note

    The block elements are hierarchical, which is especially important when moving content and applying filters. When you move a “parent” element, its “child” elements move with it. Similarly, if you use filters to exclude a “parent” element then its “child” elements will also not appear.

  • Components

    If you want to reuse some of the content inside a topic in other topics, use components. You create the content in a component, which is a separate container, and then you can insert that into as many topics as you like. A common example is a note. You can create a note as a separate component and then insert that note into many different topics.

    The content you add in a component also has to have elements for the structure and must follow the rules of DocBook.

The idea is that you build your content from modules of information, like a hierarchy of "building blocks":

  • To build a topic, you use elements and components as your building blocks.

  • To build a component, you use elements as your building blocks.

  • To build a publication, you use topics as your building blocks.

To learn more about structured content for each type of "building block", see:

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