A platform, not a codebase you host
Core dna is delivered as a hosted platform. The rendering engine, admin backend and database run on Core dna infrastructure. What your team owns is the content stored in the CMS and the templates that turn that content into pages.
That split matters day to day: there is no build step to run and no server to restart. Templates reach the live site through Core dna's version-control integration, and content changes take effect as soon as they are published.
How content is organised
Content lives in modules. Each module knows how to store, version and serve one kind of thing:
- Pages — free-form pages arranged in a tree. The default choice for landing pages and marketing content.
- Books — structured documentation: a book contains units (chapters), and a unit contains pages (articles). Use it when reading order matters.
- Blogs — dated posts with categories and tags.
- Forms — form definitions plus the submissions they collect.
- Files — images and documents, organised in folders.
Layouts and areas
Every record is rendered by a layout. A layout points at a template and declares a set of named areas — the editable fields you see in the admin. An area has a type (Text, Richtext, Image, Switch, Component Collection and so on), and the template decides where each area appears on the page.
This is why two pages can look completely different while being edited the same way: they use different layouts over the same content model.
Revisions and publishing
Content records are versioned. Editing creates a new revision rather than overwriting the old one, and one revision at a time is the active revision — the one visitors see. A record is only visible on the front end once it has been published; unpublished records return a 404 to anonymous visitors.