Craft CMS as an editorial tool: What new editors need to know
Anyone landing in the Craft CMS Control Panel for the first time is often surprised: No cluttered interface, no hidden menu items, no digital jumble like you find with some other CMSs. Instead, a clean, structured user interface that shows exactly what’s needed and nothing that isn’t.
This is no coincidence. From the outset, Craft CMS was not designed as a technical tinkering system for developers, but as a serious tool for people who work with content on a daily basis. Nevertheless, there are a few concepts when getting started that differ from other systems and which you should understand before you begin.
The Control Panel: Structure and Navigation
The Control Panel is the user interface for editors. It can be accessed via a dedicated URL, typically via the website address with the path /admin. The exact path may vary from project to project, as developers configure it individually for security reasons.
After logging in, you will find yourself on the dashboard. Depending on the configuration, brief overviews of current entries, pending tasks or statistics may be displayed here. The dashboard is set up specifically for each project and looks different depending on the website.
The left-hand navigation bar is the main point of reference. It usually contains sections such as Entries, Assets and Users, as well as other menu items depending on the scope of the project. Everything needed for day-to-day editorial work can be accessed from here.
Entries: The heart of day-to-day work
In Craft CMS, content is referred to as ‘entries’. A blog post, a product page, a press release, a landing page: as a rule, these are all entries, simply organised into different sections.
Sections provide the structural framework. A section summarises the type of content stored there, for example, all news articles or all staff profiles. Which fields can be filled in for a post depends on the specific post type. That may sound technical, but in practice it’s very simple: you click on an existing post or create a new one and immediately see which fields are available.
New entries are created using the ‘New Entry’ button, which can be found in the top right-hand corner of the relevant section. The editing form opens; you fill in the fields and save. It’s that simple in basic operation.
Drafts, revisions and the dual-control principle
One of the most useful features for editors is the draft system. Every post can be saved as a draft without going live straight away. This allows you to prepare texts at your leisure, fine-tune the wording and only publish once everything is just right.
Craft automatically saves revisions: if you wish, you can access an earlier version of an entry at any time and restore it if necessary. This is particularly valuable for longer texts or frequently updated pages. No accidental overwriting, no lost progress.
For teams, there is also the option to establish a dual-control principle. Exactly how this approval workflow is configured depends on the project.
Live Preview: See what will be published
Before a post goes live, you want to know what it will look like on the website. Craft’s Live Preview makes this possible. Clicking the preview button opens a split-screen view: the editing interface on the left, and the finished website display on the right. Changes made in the form are immediately reflected in the preview.
This is particularly helpful for content featuring images, quotes or structured content areas, where the result depends heavily on the order and combination of elements.
Assets: Managing images and files
The Assets section is the project’s file archive. This is where images, PDFs, videos and other media are uploaded and managed. Craft organises assets into so-called ‘volumes’ – folder sections with different purposes, for example, one volume for product images and another for downloads.
Images can be cropped and adjusted directly in the Asset Manager, without the need for an external image editing programme. This saves a considerable amount of time in day-to-day use. When embedding an image into a post, you can crop it to suit the specific context directly whilst embedding it.
Important to note: Craft distinguishes between the original file, which is uploaded once, and the image variants generated for the website. The original is always retained. This means you can use the same upload in different formats and sizes without having to upload it multiple times.
Field types: What lies behind the input fields
Craft CMS supports a wide range of different field types. The most common one in day-to-day use is the rich-text editor for formatted body text. In addition, there are simple text fields, drop-down menus, date fields, tick boxes, asset fields for image links and many more.
One special field type is the matrix field. It allows you to assemble content from multiple blocks. A page can thus consist of a text block, followed by an image, then a quote, then another text passage. The order can be changed using drag and drop. New blocks can be inserted or removed at any time. This is the concept that makes Craft so flexible: pages are not rigid forms, but compositions.
User roles: Who is allowed to do what
As a rule, editors are assigned a pre-configured role. This role determines which sections can be accessed, whether entries can only be created or also deleted, and whether system settings can be changed. As an editor, you generally don’t need to worry about this, but it’s good to know why certain areas of the Control Panel might not be visible. This isn’t a fault, but an intentional configuration.
Practical tips for getting started
Search and filter functions are always located in the ‘Entries’ and ‘Files’ sections.
There are several ways to save in Craft. The red button in the top right-hand corner saves and publishes immediately. Next to it, the small arrow provides further options, such as ‘Save as draft’ or ‘Save and continue’. It’s worth taking a quick look at these options right at the start to avoid accidentally publishing content.
If you want to search for and sort entries in a list, you’ll find handy filter options in the index view of each section. Entries can be filtered by status, date, author and other criteria. This saves a real amount of time, particularly when dealing with large volumes of content.
Conclusion
Craft CMS is not a system that overwhelms editors with complexity. Once you’re familiar with the basic concepts, you’ll be able to work with it quickly and confidently. Sections and entries structure the content, drafts and revisions protect your work, the live preview shows the result before publication, and matrix fields give you the freedom to build pages in a way that makes sense for the content. In our experience, a good introductory training session takes no more than two to three hours; after that, users can carry out their daily work independently.