Using the CMS

Awaiting review. Converted automatically from the retired kotahi.community documentation (archived 13 July 2026). The steps and screenshots have not yet been checked against a current Kotahi release and may be out of date. Converted from docs.kotahi.community/advanced-kotahi/cmsuse.html.

In this section

Everything you need to know about the Kotahi headless CMS.

Kotahi offers configurable publication options, including an internal CMS. Content can be published to the CMS, external endpoints, or both.

The CMS interface is provided for creating simpler publishing sites easily. You can locate the controls under Settings→CMS. If you choose the first of the items (‘Pages’) below the CMS selector, you will see the following.

CMS ‘Pages’ screen with a page list (About us, Contact us, FAQ, Submit) and an add button, a ‘Page title’ field, a URL stub field, a rich-text editor holding body text above an inserted logo figure, and ‘Publish’ and ‘Delete’ buttons with edited and published dates.

Create new pages here and edit them with the editor provided.

To add a new page, click the ‘+’ icon. The page won’t be added to the publishing site until you include it in the menu and choose to publish it. You can publish pages by clicking on the Publish action.

You can fill out the new page title, the ‘stub’ (effectively the URL the page will appear on), and then add the initial content. The editor also supports image insertion.

Layout

Layout of the page is accessed by clicking ‘Layout’ in the CMS menu.

CMS ‘Layout’ screen with a ‘Brand logo’ drag-and-drop upload area, ‘Brand Color’ swatches for primary and secondary colours, a ‘Header’ list of pages with tick boxes and drag handles, and a ‘Footer’ section for partner logo uploads with website URL fields.

Here you have some basic settings for the brand, uploading a logo, and selecting a primary and secondary color.

In the Header section, you can control the menu. The header section appears on every page. Pages ordered top to bottom are displayed from left to right as links in the header. Only selected pages are displayed when published.

‘Header’ settings panel with the instruction ‘Use checkbox to show and hide the page in the menu. Click and Drag to order them.’, listing the site’s pages with tick boxes; only three are ticked, and each row has a drag handle.

Pages selected to appear in the header section on the publishing site (Flax).

Published site header bar: the green Kotahi logo at the left and, at the right, the three navigation links selected in the CMS header settings — ‘About us’, ‘FAQ’ and ‘Submit’.

View of published header page links on the publishing site (Flax).

In the following options, you can configure what appears in the footer, starting with partner logos and associated website link. Footers are displayed on all pages.

CMS ‘Footer’ settings ‘Partners’ area with a ‘Drag and drop your files here’ upload zone above three uploaded logo files, each with a ‘Remove’ link and a website URL field.

Next you can set the footer text.

‘Footer Text’ rich-text editor with a formatting toolbar (paragraph style, bold, italic, link, lists, table options, image, full screen) above a postal address and a ‘Keep up to date’ newsletter registration line.

Lastly you can include links to additional pages in the footer (possibly items not in the topmost menu).

‘Footer Page links’ setting listing six draggable rows with tick boxes, of which only ‘Contact us’ is ticked; each row has a drag handle for reordering.

When you press ‘Publish’, the updated settings will be pushed to your publishing site.

Status

This option allows you to hide your publishing endpoint from the web. Your publishing website will only be visible to those who have access to the ‘Draft’ link.