User Documentation

What is Core dna Core dna is a digital experience platform (DXP): content, commerce and the tooling to build and run sites, in one hosted system. Read more → Signing in and finding your way around Where the admin lives, how it is organised, and the handful of screens you will use most. Read more → Creating your first page Create a page, give it a layout, fill in its areas and see it on the site — end to end. Read more → Previewing and publishing The difference between saved, active and published — and why a page can look finished and still 404. Read more → Why a page shows 404 You created the page, you can open it in the admin, and visitors still get “not found”. Here is the order to check things in. Read more → Sign in to Core dna How to log in to the admin, reset a password and sign in with SSO. Read more → How-To Videos Short video walkthroughs of the everyday tasks in the Core dna admin. Read more →

How pages are organised Pages form a tree, and that tree decides both the URL and what visitors see in navigation. Read more → Choosing a layout A layout decides both how a page looks and which fields you get. Picking the right one first saves rework. Read more → Working with components Components are the reusable blocks you stack inside a collection area to build a page section by section. Read more → SEO settings and page URLs Titles, descriptions, robots directives, share images and custom URLs — what each one controls. Read more →

Uploading images and files Getting media into the library, and the decisions worth making before you upload. Read more → Organising folders A filing structure that still makes sense once the library has a few thousand items in it. Read more → Using media in content Image areas, images inside rich text, and why the difference matters. Read more →

How menus work Menus are built independently of the page tree, which is what makes them flexible — and what surprises people. Read more → Custom URLs and redirects One changes where a page lives; the other sends visitors from an old address to a new one. Do not mix them up. Read more → How the navigation menu is built Three sources can decide where a nav link points, and the one that wins is not always the one you edited. Read more →

Building a form Define the fields, decide what is required, and place the form on a page. Read more → Reading and exporting submissions Where submitted data goes, how to work through it, and what to keep in mind about personal information. Read more → Notifications and follow-up Telling your team a submission arrived, and telling the person who submitted it that you received it. Read more →

Books, units and pages The three-level structure behind documentation, and when to use it instead of ordinary pages. Read more → Creating a book Set up a book, add its chapters, and write the first article. Read more → Writing good documentation Four kinds of documentation page, and why mixing them is what makes docs hard to use. Read more →

Revisions explained Every save creates a version. Understanding that makes editing safe rather than nerve-racking. Read more → Scheduling content Publish and unpublish dates let content appear and disappear without anyone being at a keyboard. Read more → Working as a team Permissions, ownership and the habits that stop several editors from undoing each other's work. Read more → Published, publish at, and unpublish at Three separate dates control whether a record is visible. They interact, and a record can look published in a list while being unreachable on the site. Read more →

Live Preview See a draft exactly as visitors will, before it goes live. Read more → Versioning Revisions, comparisons and rolling back to an earlier version. Read more → Response Caching How Core dna caches HTML and PDF responses, and when to clear it. Read more → Single Sign On (SSO) One account across several applications, via OAuth. Read more →

Pages Entity Creating, editing and publishing page content. Read more → Blogs Entity Blog posts, authors and multi-blog mode. Read more → FAQs Entity Questions, answers and FAQ pages. Read more → Files Manager Add, update, delete and organise uploaded files. Read more → Books Entity Long-form content organised into units and pages. Read more → Menus Entity The central place for managing every menu item. Read more → Documentation Website-specific documentation pages, authored in the admin. Read more →

Categories The central place where website categories are managed. Read more → Tags Collect content by criteria — tags work like categories and apply across applications. Read more → Global Components Configure a component once and reuse it across many pages. Read more → Configuration Component settings — whether components can be tagged or categorised. Read more →

Hooks Event-driven webhooks that connect applications together. Read more → Scheduler Run configured actions on a schedule. Read more → Forms Autoresponder Build a hook that emails the customer when they submit a form, with a PDF guide attached. A worked example from Orchestration through to testing. Read more →

Users Manage everyone with access to the website. Read more → Groups User groups that organise users and carry permissions. Read more → Authors Blog authors and their profiles. Read more → People Every user and profile on the site, admin or not. Read more → Address Types The address types held against user records. Read more → Permissions How the permission system controls access across the admin. Read more → Account Configuration Configuration settings for accounts. Read more →

Site System Sites, sub-sites and their environments. Read more → Rewrites Redirect old or mistaken URLs to the right page. Read more → Utilities Replace text in content, plus import and export. Read more → Audit Log Review every action taken in the Core dna admin. Read more → Routes Change the default URL routes of platform applications. Read more → Global Settings Timezone, language, caching and other system-wide settings. Read more → Clients Core dna supports a multisite setup: each client can hold many sites. Add and manage them under System ▸ Sites ▸ Clients. Read more → Sites Where individual sites are managed — add, edit and remove the sites configured on the system, each editable from its own record. Read more → Environments The central area for managing environments — including adding a staging environment for development — entirely from the Core dna admin. Read more → Hostnames Hostnames are managed per environment rather than in their own admin area: edit the environment under System ▸ Sites ▸ Environments to change them. Read more → Billable Requests View monthly or yearly page requests for every site hosted on Core dna in one view, for billing enquiries. Found under Configuration ▸ Sites. Read more → Replace Text Replace any text in any content across the whole site. Covers every layout area and custom field, but not model-level fields such as blog post titles. Read more → Template Errors Helps integrators debug template code by giving extra detail about a specific error. Found under System ▸ Sites in the admin sidebar. Read more → Import/Export Export structural elements of the DXP — layouts, input types — and import them into another environment, which makes development, QA and testing far easier. Read more →

Layouts Manage every layout on the site — pages, blogs and components. Read more → Layout Categories Group layouts into categories. Read more → Custom Fields Store information beyond an application's built-in fields. Read more → Input Types The editors and value types that fields and layout areas use. Read more → Custom Entities Define your own entities beyond pages, posts and products. Read more →

Products Entity Products and product categories. Read more →

Forms Entity Set up forms and collect submissions. Read more → Mailer Entity The log of every email the platform has sent. Read more → Chat Channels (Slack) Connect a Slack workspace so Core dna can post into your channels. Used by AI agents to mirror escalations where somebody will notice them. Read more →

Providers & budgets Agents call an AI provider on your own account and API key — Core dna does not resell model access. Where those keys are stored and what agents may spend. Read more → Agent library The library lists every agent shipped with your release and manages the ones you have installed — an installed agent shows an Installed badge and a Configure button. Read more → Installing an agent Installing creates your own configured copy of a library agent, through the wizard at Agents ▸ Library. Installing alone does not start it running. Read more → Escalations When an agent reaches a decision a person should make, it stops and asks. The run pauses, waits for an answer, then carries on with that answer in hand. Read more → Invocations Every agent run is recorded as an invocation — succeeded, failed, or still waiting on a person. The run log to open when an agent did not do what you expected. Read more → Recommendations A recommendation is one proposal from one agent run — a corrected sentence, a better meta description, a suggested link. The inbox where they queue for review. Read more → Library agent reference The agents shipped with this release, with their settings and what each may change. Explains the Triggers column and why admin costs are estimates. Read more →

Simple (master) Simple search indexes entities by their data. Search the core field set or add your own fields to the master index, then query them. Read more → Facets Faceted search attaches filterable, countable attributes to your product catalog — brand, colour, size, price band — the data behind a refine-your-results sidebar. Read more → Ways to filter/search/order The query parameter syntax for search: filters, searchFields, orderBy and highlightFields, read from the query string or the $parameters array. Read more →