Content Management

Overview#

Content management is the core of Flare CMS. Every piece of content belongs to a collection and has a title, slug, status, and a data object that holds the custom fields defined by the collection schema.

Browsing Content#

Navigate to Admin > Content to see your collections listed. Click on a collection name to see all content items in that collection.

The content list shows:

Title -- The content item's title
Status -- Draft, Published, or Archived
Created -- When the item was created
Updated -- When it was last modified
Author -- Who created it

You can filter the list by status and search by title.

Creating Content#

Click New Content from the content list
Select the target collection (if not already selected)
Fill in the form fields:
- Title (required) -- The display title
- Slug -- Auto-generated from the title, but you can customize it
- Custom fields defined by the collection schema
Click Save as Draft or Publish

Tip

Slugs are auto-generated from the title by lowercasing, removing special characters, and replacing spaces with hyphens. You can edit the slug before publishing, but once an item is published for the first time, the slug is locked.

Editor Types#

Depending on how your collection fields are configured, you'll see different editor components:

Field Type	Editor	Use For
`string`	Text input	Titles, short text
`text`	Textarea	Longer plain text
`number`	Number input	Counts, prices
`boolean`	Toggle/checkbox	Flags, on/off settings
`select`	Dropdown	Predefined choices
`quill`	Quill rich text editor	Blog posts, articles
`tinymce`	TinyMCE editor	Full WYSIWYG editing
`markdown`	EasyMDE editor	Documentation, technical content
`image`	Image picker	Featured images, thumbnails
`date`	Date picker	Publish dates, events
`url`	URL input	Links, external references
`email`	Email input	Contact emails

Rich text editors (Quill, TinyMCE, EasyMDE) are enabled through the plugin system. If a plugin isn't active, the field falls back to a plain textarea.

Content Status#

Every content item has one of three statuses:

Status	Meaning	API Visibility
Draft	Work in progress	Only with `?status=draft`
Published	Live and visible	Default in API responses
Archived	Hidden but preserved	Only with `?status=archived`

Status Transitions#

Not all transitions are allowed:

draft --> published --> archived
  ^                       |
  |                       |
  +-----------------------+

Draft to Published -- Publish your content
Published to Archived -- Hide without deleting
Archived to Draft -- Bring back for editing

Note

The admin UI currently has a limitation where unpublishing (Published to Draft) doesn't always work through the status dropdown. This is a known inherited issue. You can use the API directly to change status: PUT /api/content/:id with {"status": "draft"}.

Editing Content#

Click on any content item to open the edit form. Make your changes and click Save.

Key behaviors:

Auto-save is not enabled -- you must click Save explicitly
Slug lock -- After first publish, the slug cannot be changed (prevents broken URLs)
Version history -- Status changes are logged in the audit trail
Hooks -- Plugins can intercept saves via before/after hooks and block invalid changes

Deleting Content#

Click the delete button on a content item. The admin UI uses soft delete -- the item is marked as deleted but remains in the database. The API DELETE endpoint performs a hard delete.

Warning

Hard deletes through the API are permanent. Soft-deleted items from the admin UI can potentially be recovered from the database, but there's no UI for this currently.

Permissions#

What you can do depends on your role:

Admin -- Full access to all content in all collections
Editor -- Can create, edit, and delete any content
Author -- Can create content and edit/delete only their own items
Viewer -- Read-only access

Admins can also set per-collection permissions for individual users through the collection settings.

Keyboard Shortcuts#

The content editor supports standard keyboard shortcuts:

Ctrl+S / Cmd+S -- Save content (where supported by the editor plugin)
Esc -- Close modals and panels

Bulk Operations#

Currently, content items are managed one at a time. Bulk operations (bulk publish, bulk delete, bulk status change) are not yet available in the admin UI. For bulk operations, use the API directly.