I have a page that I've used partial designs to create a consistent header and footer for all pages across my site. Now I'm trying to figure out how to have different types of content in my "main" section. I see the Page Content type in the list of components, but I can't figure out how to use it. Every time I try to use it, all I get for a rendering is the word Content Field.
What is the purpose of this Page Content, and how can I use it?
I will try to answer your main question and few that you asked in comments.
Before that lets clarify what variants are
Variants:
Page Content is one of the simplest renderings in SXA (in terms of complexity). Without variants it would be a rendering which displays a single field (same like basic rendering which displays page title).
Adding variants to a renderings change it in a way you can dynamically choose which fields should be used to display the content.
So instead of creating different components which are the same but displays different fields (content or title for example) you can have one with variants.
Yes. We could live without Title or Page Content rendering in SXA because both are working the same.
Page Content rendering
I think this is a key point here.
It displays fields which are present on your context item. Your current page is holding data for Page Content so there is no mapping needed.
I don't have any page designs. I want to put renderings directly on a page.
My page template has following specification: contains single field Content.
Select default variant Content
Now you will see that the rendering will display single field from your page named Content
I don't have any page designs. I want to put renderings directly on a page.
My page template has following specification: contains fields Title, Content, Image.
Title, Content, Image fields and assign this to your Page Content (see screenshot below)
Now you will see that the rendering will display multiple fields from your page in a way you defined it in your Variant Definition. You can change the order of fields, change tags, add prefix, suffix, nest fields in some divs and so on.
Like you already noticed when you use Page Content on partial design the only thing you see is Content field (see example for multiple fields).
It is totally normal. We call it mock values for partial designs. You already know where the Page Content gets the fields from (from the context item).
When you are editing partial design you are currently on an item which does not contain any of your fields, so there is nothing to display.
If you use this partial design with page content on it on any page where fields are present you will see them rendered.
Let's say you have footer, header partial designs.
You want to use footer and header on every page but have different center section (different main) for different page types.
You have to define different partial designs and create different page designs then for different page templates.
Example:
News Page Design, which consists
header partial designmain with news fields partial designfooter partial designBlog Post Design, which consists
header partial designmain with blog post fields partial designfooter partial designThen you will have to map different designs to different page types:
From now each of your page will share the same parts like: footer, header but will have different main depending on template.
Hope it helps
I think what you want to do is create a page template for each "type" of content page (e.g., blogs, products, news, etc).
To add a custom page template, you can create a template for your Project that inherits from your Page Template (or from the SXA template that it inherits from).
After that, I would create a global header and footer partial, and then a partial for each type of page that you want. You can assign those to page designs for each type of page across your site.
The Page Content type in the list of Components in a plain SXA setup will output the Content field of your current item.
You can adapt it with variant to show more fields.
Haven't tested this myself, but in the "Rendering Variants" you can find a Page Content item. I assume you could add variant there to include some additional fields in the Page Content component.
