Folders and tags

Folders and tags are two ways to keep a growing workspace tidy. Folders give documents a place, like a filing cabinet. Tags describe what a document is about and let one document belong to several groups. Both are for people. The CMS never decides what becomes a page, a developer does, and a developer can pick documents by folder or tag.

Folders

The tree on the left shows the folders and documents of each folder in the order you have given them, and the rest by title or name after that (Reorder documents and folders). Click the arrow next to a folder to close or open it.

A folder is only for your own organisation. Moving a document between folders never breaks a link, because links use the document’s ID (Writing documents).

Rules for folder names

• Up to 64 characters.
• Letters, digits, spaces, hyphens and underscores. Start with a letter or digit.
• No slashes, and no _ or . at the start.
• Up to 8 levels deep.
• assets is a reserved name at the top level. Choose another.

The dialog tells you when a name does not fit, for example “Names cannot contain slashes” or “Use letters, digits, spaces, hyphens and underscores”.

Create a folder

1. Choose New, then Folder. Or open a folder’s menu and choose New subfolder.
2. A row called New folder appears in the tree with its name selected. The new folder goes inside the folder you are working in.
3. Type the name and press Enter. Press Escape to cancel.

Rename a folder

1. Open the folder’s menu (the three dots on its row) and choose Rename.
2. Type the new name and press Enter.

Move a folder

Choose Move to… in the folder’s menu, pick the new parent, and choose Move here. Or drag the folder onto another folder. To move something to the top level, drag it onto the empty area of the tree, or onto the Drop here to move to the top level box that appears while you drag.

A folder cannot move into itself or below itself. A folder that moves to another parent loses its place in the order and follows the placed items there (Reorder documents and folders).

What happens to published documents

If a folder holds published documents, moving or renaming it changes the path of their files in the lake. The CMS asks first: the dialog Move folder or Rename folder says “3 published documents will be republished at the new path. Links keep working.” Choose Move and republish or Rename and republish.

The republish is one commit. It moves the files as they were last published. Drafts with unpublished changes stay unpublished.

A folder move is refused if someone is editing a document inside it: “Someone is editing: Fleet services (Ada). Try again when they are done.” It is also refused if a folder of that name already exists there: “There is already a folder with that name there. Rename one of them first.”

Delete a folder

Choose Delete folder in the folder’s menu.

• An empty folder is removed at once.
• A folder with documents asks first. The dialog Delete folder? says how many documents it holds. They move to the Trash and can be restored within 30 days, and restoring recreates the folder. Choose Move 4 documents to trash.
• It cannot be deleted while someone edits a document inside. The dialog lists who.

See Trash.

Move a document

Open the document’s menu in the tree and choose Move to…, or choose Move… above the document. Pick the folder and choose Move here. You can also drag a document onto a folder.

If the document is published, moving it counts as an unpublished change. Nothing is republished by the move itself, because only moving or renaming a folder republishes. The file moves in the lake the next time you publish the document. If the new folder already has a file with the same name, the CMS adds a number to the name for you. The document loses its place in the order and follows the placed items in the new folder.

Which folder does New use?

New documents and folders go where you are working: the folder you clicked, or the folder of the open document, or the top level.

Tags

A tag is a short label. A document has up to 20 tags, and each tag is up to 50 characters. Rules for tags are in Writing documents.

Add tags to a document

Type in the Tags field above the text and press Enter or comma. As you type, the workspace’s existing tags appear with how many documents use them, such as fleet · 12. Choose one with the arrow keys and Enter to reuse it.

Keep tags consistent

The CMS helps you avoid Fleet, fleet and fleets all at once:

• Tags match without regard to case. If you type fleet and the workspace uses Fleet, the existing spelling is used.
• When a document is saved, the CMS maps each tag to the most-used spelling in the workspace. If two spellings are equally common, it picks the first in alphabetical order.
• Tags that are close but not the same, such as fleet and fleets, stay separate. Look at the list before you create a new tag.

The same rule applies to media. Tags on media files and on documents share one list, so the suggestions show both. The list is not stored anywhere: it is whatever tags the documents and the media files of the workspace currently have.

Filter by tag

1. Use the Filter by tag field above the tree. Click it and choose a tag. You can only choose tags that exist.
2. Add more tags to narrow the list. A document must have all the tags you chose.

The tree is replaced by a flat list of matching documents, with the tags that match highlighted. To go back, remove the tags. You can combine a tag filter with a text search (Search).

A tag shown on a document that is read-only is a link. Choosing it opens the documents with that tag.

Rename or delete a tag

The editor has no tag manager. To change a tag, edit it on each document. To find the documents, filter by the tag. Developers use tags to pick documents, so tell them before you change a tag that a site depends on.

If something goes wrong

What’s next

• Make documents visible to sites: Publishing.
• Find a document fast: Search.