Configure the CMS

You setup your site with Forestry and now you’re ready to configure your CMS. This doc will go over:

1. Setting up correct paths for images and other media
2. Configuring your content model (the fields used on each page, post, etc)

Setting up Image Paths

When your team uploads images and other media, you want to ensure they’re going to the right directory. Set this up by going to Settings > File Paths.

You should see the following settings which are described below.

Upload Directory

The folder within your repo to store the uploaded media. If this is set to a directory that doesn’t exist, Forestry will create that directory.

Public Path

The path that will prepend media files uploaded in the body editor.

This usually has the same value as the Front Matter Path, but in some cases you may need these paths to be different. If this value were set to /uploads Forestry would write out the following in your Markdown body:

## My new post

The content body URL path is prepended to images
uploaded in the document body, like so:

![](/uploads/image.jpg)

Front Matter Path

The path that will prepend media files uploaded from Front Matter fields. For example, if this value were set to /uploads Forestry would write out the following image value.

---
title: My new post
date: 2017-12-31 12:00:00 -0400
image: /uploads/image.jpg
---

Example Media Settings

With Hugo, all static assets belong in your /static directory which then get outputted in the root of your built site.

However, Jekyll supports static assets in your project root. For this reason, we often see the following File Path settings in Forestry:

Variables

Each of these settings supports the following variables at upload time:

• :year:: the current year, formatted YYYY
• :month:: the current month, formatted MM
• :day:: the current day, formatted DD

When these variables are used in the Upload Directory setting, Forestry will create the necessary folders if they don’t exist when a file is uploaded.

For this (Hugo) site, we organize media by month, like so:

upload_path: /hugo/static/uploads/:year:/:month:
frontmatter_file_url_template: /uploads/:year:/:month:
body_file_url_template: /uploads/:year:/:month:

For more information on media settings visit the Media Library doc.

Your Content Model & Front Matter Templates

In this section we will configure your content model. This determines which fields are displayed for your pages, posts, etc.

When you sync a new site with Forestry, all data found in the Front Matter for your pages will be displayed as UI fields.

However, if you want to configure how these fields are displayed for your editors and which fields should appear for new pieces of content, you’ll need to set up a Front Matter Template (FMT).

This is where we’ll create a UI that’s tailored to our Front Matter data.

If the Front Matter for your blog posts looks like this:

---
title: My new post
date: 2017-12-31 12:00:00 -0400
image: /uploads/image.jpg
---

You’ll want to create a template called Posts and add the following fields:

This will generate the following UI for your posts content:

Click the settings icon to configure each field

Some of the options available are:

• Adding help text
• Making some fields hidden from editors
• Setting a human-readable label
• Setting the name of the key to be written out to your Front Matter
• Many more options depending on the field type

Disable the Body Editor

Finally, if you do not need a WYSIWYG editor for this content type, enable the Hide Body toggle.

Applying a Template to a Page

To apply an FMT to an individual page, navigate to the page you want to apply the FMT to and click Settings > Change Template

Select your newly created template and save your changes.

Congrats! Now you should have fields set up for your different content types. For more information on Front Matter Templates, read the full doc here