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  • Components as structured content

Components as structured content

As you add information to a topic, you may realize that there are parts of the content that you could reuse in other topics. For example, you might have a note that needs to be repeated in several other topics. To reuse parts of a topic, you'll need to create that content in a different type of component.

Components are a special type of "container" for content and they are designed to be inserted into topics. The idea is that you:

  1. Create a component.

  2. Add the content to the component.

  3. Insert the component into your topics, where appropriate. Edit the topic and select Insert and then Component.

For example, the following images show a note that is created as a separate note component and then inserted into two different topics.

Paligo editor showing a topic and the Content Manager. A callout box highlights a note component in the Content Manager with an arrow pointing to the topic, where the note component is inserted as content.

A note component is inserted into an "Add users" topic ...

Paligo editor showing a topic and the Content Manager. A callout box highlights a note component in the Content Manager with an arrow pointing to the topic, where the note component is inserted as content.

... the same note component is inserted into a "Grant permissions to users" topic.

There are many different types of component you can create, including:

  • Informal topics

    Use informal topics to reuse a single element or a sequence of elements (and the associated content).

    For example, you might want to reuse a paragraph and an image together, and to do that, you would add them to an informal topic. You then add the informal topic as a component in as many regular topics as you like.

  • Note, tip, caution, warning, and other types of admonitions

    For admonitions that you can reuse in many different topics. It's a good idea to create admonitions as components as it means the same wording is used consistently.

  • Itemizedlist

    For entire itemized lists (bullet lists) that you want to reuse in different topics.

  • Simplelist

    For reusable simple lists that can render a list of items on a single line.

  • Step

    For reusable steps that you can insert into procedure structures.

  • Example

    For reusable examples. These are often useful when you have multiple versions of a topic and each version needs to contain the same example.

When you create a component, you can open it in the editor and add content to it. The content in a component has to follow the same content model rules as content in a regular topic, so you can only add elements at positions where they are valid.

To learn how to create admonitions as components and then insert them into topics, see Create a Reusable Admonition.

Note

For a subsection in a topic, create a new topic for the subsection. Add the content to the subsection topic and then insert it as a component inside the main “parent” topic. For details, see Create Subsections.