The default mechanism to store content items in Decent CMS is to use files under the /sites directory. This can be replaced with database storage, of course (the first provider that will be implemented after the file-based one will be CouchDB), but the file storage has some unique advantages. While it's obviously not something you'd use on a big site, being able to xcopy contents, and deploy contents with a simple ftp client is very powerful. Being able to look into subdirectories and find content items as single files that can be modified with a simple text editor is extremely comfortable.

If you look under the /sites directory that's at the root of a DecentCMS instance, you'll find one or several subdirectories that correspond to the tenants or sites running under the instance. If there's only one site, it'll usually be called "default". Under each of those tenant directories, you'll find the same structure.

Notice that all the files that define a given web site, including media and logs, can be found under a single directory. That means that deploying a site is as simple as deploying the site's directory.

The settings.json file

The settings.json file contains contains the site's settings, including its name, the host names to which it must respond, the list of enabled features, and the settings for each of those features, if they have any.

A complete description of this file can be found here.

The content directory

The content directory is where files describing content items can be found if the file content store feature is active. The directory structure reflects the content item ids. For example, an item accessible as /path/to/item has the id path/to/item, and will be described by a item.json, item.yaml, or item.yaml.md file in the content/path/to directory.

Landing pages can also be stored under the index name. For example, the /path/to URL can be described by a to.yaml.md file, as described in the previous paragraph, but it can also be described by an index.json, index.yaml, or index.yaml.md file under the content/path/to directory.

The widget directory

The widget directory is where widgets and layers are defined. It contains an index.json file that contains a JSON description of widget layers and pointers to the widgets that they contain. The directory also contains one file per widget, named with the widget's id, and the .json, .yaml, or .yaml.md extension, if the file content store feature is active.

The format for the index.json layer file is described in this topic.

The media directory

The media directory contains all asset files that are specific to the site (typically images). Those assets are served directly under the /media path. For example, /sites/mysite/media/logos/logo.svg will be served when /media/logos/logo.svg is requested.

The navigation directory

The navigation directory contains a JSON file for each navigation menu in the site. The name of the file without extension is the name of the menu. The directory should at least contain one default.json file for the default menu.

The format of the navigation file is described in this topic.

The logs directory

Depending on the site's logging configuration, the logs directory typically contains one log file per day, that has records of events and errors that the application went through. Logs can be configured in the site's settings.json file under the winston-logger section. You may have to manually create the /sites/mysite/logs directory.

Examples

Real examples of DecentCMS site directories can be found in the following Github repositories:

• Decent Consulting: https://github.com/DecentCMS/DecentConsulting
• DecentCMS: https://github.com/DecentCMS/DecentCMS-WebSite

You can even clone those repositories into your DecentCMS installation and experiment with them as sample sites.