Content Instances

A concrete record created from a Content Template — authored across versions, with hierarchy, taxonomies, tags, relationships, workflows, ownership, and archive.

Overview

A Content Instance is a concrete record created from a Content Template. It inherits the template’s type and attribute schema, and is authored as one or more Content Versions across languages, environments, and draft / published states. Instances support hierarchy, taxonomies, tags, relationships, workflows, ownership, and archive — and, for products, inventory, variations, and pricing. For the bigger picture, see the Content overview.

Where to find it

Each template’s instances are listed under Content, in that template’s own list.

Instance types

An instance’s type comes from its template. The same content engine powers five kinds of object:

Type	What it is	Notable behaviour
Stories	Editorial content / articles	Content + versions; no commerce.
Products	Sellable goods and services	Item codes, SKU, prices, inventory, variations — powers Commerce.
Locations	Physical or virtual places	Used as inventory locations in Commerce.
Blocks	Reusable content fragments	Composed into other content.
Taxonomies	Categorization trees	A taxonomy scoped to an object type.

Commerce builds on content instances. A sellable Product is a products instance, and a Location (warehouse, store) is a locations instance — so Commerce’s inventory and orders run on the same records you author here.

Properties

Property	Type	Required	Description
title	string	Yes	Display name.
slug	string	Yes	Identifier — unique within the type (a–z, 0–9, -).
type	enum	Auto	Inherited from the template.
template_id	reference	Yes	The template this instance is built from.
parent_id	reference	No	Parent record, for hierarchy.
taxonomy_object_type	string	Conditional	Taxonomies only — the object type the taxonomy categorizes.
versions	array	Auto	The instance’s content versions.

An instance’s content fields (its attribute values) don’t live at the top level — they live on each version, so different languages and environments can hold different content.

Versions

Every instance is authored through versions — one rendition per language × environment × status. This is where content is drafted, published, unpublished, restored, and propagated across languages. See Content Versions for the full model and its operations.

Products

When the template is a product, its instances carry the commerce data the Commerce module runs on: item codes (SKUs), prices, inventory, and variations. Publishing a product keeps its sellable record in sync so it’s available to orders. The product options that gate all of this are set on the template.

Relationships

An instance can connect to others through:

• Hierarchy — parent/child nesting within its type.
• Taxonomies and Tags — categorization and labelling.
• Custom Relationships — typed links to other objects.

Behaviour & rules

• Slug uniqueness is per type — an instance’s slug must be unique within its type, not globally.
• Archive, don’t hard-delete — instances use Archive (soft delete) and can be restored.
• Publishing fires events — publishing or unpublishing a version triggers system events for Events & Automation.
• Scheduling — a version’s publish/unpublish can be scheduled, manually or with a Publishing Window.

Seeds

Content instances travel between environments with Seeds, both ways:

Seed type	Supported	Notes
Structural	Yes	Full-fidelity export/import, one by one.
Instance	Yes	Bulk insert into a single template’s instances — the high-volume path.

An instance seed is a flat array of records targeting one template; each record’s content lives inside its versions, with attribute values grouped under their attribute group’s slug (for example default):

[
  {
    "slug": "sample-content-1",
    "title": "Sample Content 1",
    "versions": [
      {
        "language": "en",
        "environment": "production",
        "status": "draft",
        "title": "English Production Version",
        "slug": "en-production",
        "default": {
          "description": "<p>Sample <strong>formatted</strong> text</p>"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
]

Instance seeds are reserved for template instances and don’t carry hierarchy — for parent-child links, use a structural seed or set them in the UI. See Seeds for the full format.

Governance & permissions

A super admin or Master can manage any instance. Instances carry Ownership, so a Journey Manager manages the instances they own.

API access

Content instances have full CRUD (scoped by template), plus operations to create, update, publish, unpublish, restore, propagate, and schedule versions, and — for products — to build variations and manage item codes. See the API reference.

Related

Content Templates

The blueprint an instance is created from.

Content Versions

Language × environment × status renditions.

Publishing Windows

Schedule when a version goes live.

Commerce

How product and location instances power Commerce.