Oxfam America

Publications and Files

You can use publication content types and File content types to post files for download - usually PDF files, but you could in theory post any file you wanted.

There are a variety of content types that fall under the general category of Publications - see the Content Types documentation for the full list. These all work exactly the same way - the only difference is the name of the type. These types are used to post publications for download.

You can also post File content types all by themselves, but this is usually not best practice, and we at OA believe in best practice. Here's the breakdown:

  • Post Publications when you want to post any publication-like file for download, even a video file or something similar. Publications allow you to: write a brief, user-friendly description of your file, allowing it to show up properly in searches; associate metadata with your file, allowing it to show up properly in Topic-generated lists; and group multiple files together when they are part of one publication (e.g. a report summary and the full report).
  • Post Files when something really shouldn't appear to be an Oxfam publication, or when you're too lazy and shiftless to write a summary. Really the only time I've ever posted Files outside of a publication is for reprints of external documents, such as the full text of proposed legislation, and even that was probably a bad idea.

Posting Publications

Publications work just like any other content type - see Adding and Editing Content for more information. As usual, the content type you want to add must be enabled in the folder before you can add it. Which Publication type you choose is up to you - I generally use Research Paper as a catch-all for publications that don't fall into a specific existing category.

The Edit screen for a publication is the same as it is on most other content. You have a Title, a Subtitle, a Start Date, and Body Text. These function the same way as they do on other content; the Subtitle, specific to Publications, appears in small caps below the title. The Start Date only appears on the page as month and year. The Body Text is the summary of the publication - usually it's only one or two paragraphs.

The Description field doesn't appear on the Edit screen - instead, it appears under the Properties tab, and generally gets used in the same way as the Teaser field - text in the Description does not appear on the Publication page, but does appear in sidebars referencing this publication on other pages.

The main difference between Publications and other content types is the Files tab. Publications actually work like Folders - they can contain other pieces of content. Generally, they only contain Files.

Here's how the process works:

  1. Add a new Publication.
  2. Fill out the main Edit screen.
  3. Hit Save.
  4. You'll end up wherever you were when you added the new item. Click on the Publication you just created.
  5. Click on the Files tab. You'll see a standard folder listing. Ignore the cp_container folder.
  6. Go to Add New Item and add a File.
  7. The file content type allows you to upload a file (again, usually a PDF) from your computer. The Title and Description you give the file don't really matter if you only have one file, but it's a good idea to give it a descriptive title (often the same title you gave the publication). If you have only one file, the download link will read "Download this publication". If you have more than one file, there will be multiple links, each reading "Download File Title".

That's basically it, though you probably also want to go to the Properties tab (for the Publication, not the File) and set the metadata for your content. It's a slightly involved process - definitely more involved than just adding a File - but worthwhile; users get a cover page with a publication summary, and they are always appropriately warned before downloading a file. In addition, as noted above, Publications make it more likely that files will show up appropriately in search results - the publication summary gets its full text indexed, while PDFs do not.