ContentCreator · Template development

SiteDev — Template Development in ContentCreator

SiteDev (the Development Tools in ContentCreator) let project developers make everyday template changes — forms, rules, output channels, snippets — without leaving ContentCreator and switching to SiteArchitect. This guide follows a walkthrough of the tools: opening the template store, editing a section template's form and HTML output, and using the built-in DQM quality analysis and AI Code Assistant.

AI generated Heads up: This documentation was generated with AI and may contain inaccuracies or out-of-date details. Always verify critical information against the official FirstSpirit documentation before relying on it.

What is SiteDev?

SiteDev is the informal name for the Development Tools in ContentCreator — a built-in set of editors that expose the FirstSpirit template store directly inside ContentCreator. Instead of opening the SiteArchitect desktop client for every small change, a developer can adjust a template's form, rules, output channels and more from the same browser window an editor uses.

The goal, in the words of the official documentation, is to help project developers "complete easy development tasks fast and comfortably." It is aimed at routine adjustments made close to the content, not at replacing the full development environment.

The screenshots in this guide come from a FirstSpirit demo project (the "Smart Living" demo). Template and component names in your own project will differ.

Reference: Crownpeak's official documentation for these tools is Template Development in ContentCreator. This guide summarises a hands-on walkthrough and points back to it for the full feature list.

Scope & boundaries

The development tools deliberately cover the common tasks a developer does day to day. They are powerful, but they are not a full replacement for SiteArchitect.

What you can edit

Area	What it covers
Forms (GOM)	The input form of a template — add, remove and arrange input components.
Rules	Dynamic form logic (validation, visibility, dependencies).
Output channels	The HTML (and other) rendering of a template.
Snippets	The label/thumbnail a template shows in lists and reports.
Database schemata & queries	Schema mappings and query definitions.
Workflows	Workflow definitions and their state diagrams.

These tools target routine development. For advanced work — complex refactors, deep debugging, or features not exposed here — use SiteArchitect. A one-click Open in SiteArchitect link is available from every template.

Opening the development tools

The tools live behind the code icon (</>) in the ContentCreator top toolbar. When you have the right developer permissions, clicking it opens the template store report in place of the page preview.

The ContentCreator preview of a demo homepage with the code icon in the top toolbar highlighted, ready to open the development tools — Start from any page. The `</>` code icon in the toolbar (highlighted) opens the development tools.

The template store

The development report shows the project's template store as a familiar tree. Each node is a category of template or template-related object:

Page Templates — the layouts behind pages.
Section Templates — the reusable content blocks placed on pages.
Link Templates — how links are configured and rendered.
Format Templates — reusable rendering fragments and inline formats.
Scripts — BeanShell scripts used across the project.
Workflows — release and editorial workflows.
Database Schemata — schema and query definitions.

The template store shown as a tree in ContentCreator with nodes for Page Templates, Section Templates, Link Templates, Format Templates, Scripts, Workflows and Database Schemata — The template store inside ContentCreator. Expand a node and select a template to open it in an editor tab.

Use the search box at the top of the tree to jump straight to a template by name. Templates open as tabs, so you can work on several at once.

The form (GOM) editor

Opening a template — here the teaser section template — lands on the Form tab. This is the visual editor for the template's form definition (GOM), split into three panels:

Available components (left) — a palette of input components you can drag into the form: Text input, Rich textfield (CMS_INPUT_DOM), Combobox, Checkbox, Date input, Reference, Link, List, Number input, Image map and more.
Form structure (middle) — the current form as a tree of groups and fields (for the teaser: a Content group with st_headline, st_text, st_image, st_image_alt_text and st_cta; a Style group; a sectionLifespan group). Drag to add or reorder.
Source (right) — the live XML of the form, kept in sync with the visual structure.

The Form tab of the teaser section template: a component palette on the left, the drag-and-drop form structure in the middle, and the form XML source on the right — The Form (GOM) editor: component palette, drag-and-drop structure, and live XML source, side by side. Tabs across the top switch between Form, Rules, html, Snippets and Rendering logs.

Above the panels, Fallback values and Default values let you inspect those aspects of the form, and a View switch toggles between the visual editor, a split view, and pure source. Nothing is committed until you use the Save changes button at the bottom; Revert changes discards them.

Source view & other tabs

Switching the View to source shows the whole form as editable XML — CMS_INPUT_TEXT, CMS_INPUT_DOM, FS_REFERENCE, CMS_INPUT_LINK and their LANGINFOS language labels. A minimap on the right helps you navigate long definitions, and the XML editor supports auto-completion.

The form definition shown as editable XML source, with CMS_INPUT_TEXT, CMS_INPUT_DOM and FS_REFERENCE elements and a minimap on the right — The same form in source view. Language labels (`LANGINFO`) and component attributes are edited directly as XML.

The tabs across the top of every template give you the rest of its definition:

Tab	Purpose
Form	The input form (GOM), visual or source.
Rules	Dynamic form logic — validation, visibility and dependencies.
html	The HTML output channel (other channels appear as their own tabs).
Snippets	The label and thumbnail shown for datasets/sections of this template.
Rendering logs	Rendering output and profiling to help diagnose template errors.

The output channel editor

The html tab is the template's HTML output channel. It is a full code editor with FirstSpirit template syntax highlighting — $CMS_SET, $CMS_IF, $CMS_SWITCH, $CMS_VALUE, $CMS_RENDER — alongside the markup and CSS classes the template emits. A minimap gives a quick overview of long channels.

The html output channel of the teaser template shown in a syntax-highlighted code editor with FirstSpirit template instructions and a minimap — The HTML output channel editor with FirstSpirit template syntax highlighting and a minimap. Edit the rendering here and Save.

The editor supports auto-completion (Ctrl+Space) and Emmet-style HTML shortcuts, and integrates FirstSpirit's online help — so you can write output-channel code comfortably without leaving the browser.

Preview, save & SiteArchitect

While editing a template you always have three anchors at hand:

Open preview — render the template with sample content to check your change before committing.
Save changes / Revert changes — commit or discard the edits in the current tab.
Open in SiteArchitect — hand the same template off to the full desktop client when a task exceeds the in-browser tools.

A version history is available per template, so changes made here can be compared and, if needed, restored.

DQM quality analysis

The output-channel editor includes a DQM (Digital Quality Management) panel. Run it and FirstSpirit checks the rendered output against a set of quality rules, listing issues grouped by category — usability, SEO, accessibility, legal and brand. Examples from the walkthrough:

"H3 headings should be no longer than…" — Content presentation, Usability
"Link text longer than 80 characters…" — Links, SEO, Usability
"All pages should contain a privacy link" — Cookies, Legal
"Do not use inline styles" — URL structure & code, Accessibility, Brand

An Only for current template filter narrows the results to the template you are editing, so you can see the quality impact of your own change immediately.

The DQM analysis panel open beside the html editor, listing quality findings grouped by category such as usability, SEO, legal and accessibility — DQM analysis lists quality findings next to the code, each tagged with its category. Use "Only for current template" to focus on your change.

The AI Code Assistant

Next to DQM sits an AI Code Assistant. It reviews the template's code against a configurable prompt and reports back — for a clean template, simply "No issues were found!"

The prompts it runs are editable. In the walkthrough, a Global Prompt named AnalyzeHtml instructs the assistant to act as a Generative Experience Optimization (GEO) expert and check the HTML for JSON-LD availability, content parity between structured data and visible text, structured-data coverage, and machine-readable content structure (FAQs, headings, alt-texts, metadata).

The Edit operation dialog for a Global Prompt named AnalyzeHtml, defining an AI prompt that analyses HTML for Generative Experience Optimization readiness, with the Code Assistant panel showing no issues found — Editing the `AnalyzeHtml` Global Prompt. Prompts can be tested (**Test Prompt**) and reused across projects; the Code Assistant runs them against the current template.

Note: Global Prompts are shared operations — a banner in the dialog notes the prompt is "specified in Global Prompts and available in all projects." Editing one affects every project that uses it.

Tips & good practice

Use it for the small stuff. Form tweaks, label changes, output fixes and rule adjustments are what these tools are built for; escalate bigger work to SiteArchitect.
Preview before you save. Use Open preview to confirm a template change renders correctly before committing it.
Keep the visual and source views in sync. The form structure and its XML are two views of the same thing — edit in whichever is faster and check the other.
Run DQM after output changes. The quality panel catches usability, SEO, accessibility and legal regressions right where you made the change.
Mind Global Prompts. Code Assistant prompts marked global are shared across projects — edit them deliberately.
Reach for SiteArchitect when needed. Open in SiteArchitect is one click away for anything the in-browser tools don't cover.