Page Designers and Content Authors

The storefront’s content model splits every page into two parts: content and presentation. A Content Author works in Document Authoring or the Universal Editor, controlling the content on a page: the words, images, and choice of blocks. A Page Designer works in the storefront’s code, building the presentation ahead of time: a hero banner’s layout, fonts, colors, and sizes.

This split exists because pre-built, tested layouts keep pages fast, consistent, and accessible — something page-by-page styling can’t guarantee. Consistent markup is also easier to optimize for search engines. Because of this split, Content Authors can freely pick from what already exists, but a Page Designer has to build anything new first.

Two roles

Building a page on your storefront involves two roles:

• The Page Designer builds new blocks and the layout options within them, including a block’s styling, spacing, and behavior across devices. This role requires HTML, CSS, Git, and JavaScript skills and works directly in the storefront’s code, but not on drop-ins or their underlying behavior.
• The Content Author starts from the template closest to their needs, then adds text, images, and the right pre-built blocks to assemble the page, in Document Authoring or the Universal Editor. Content Authors choose from the layout options that a Page Designer has already built. This role maps to the “author” role described in Author and developer tasks.

Splitting styling from content this way keeps site design consistent.

How the roles work together

A layout option must exist before a Content Author can pick it. However, the two roles do not always work sequentially. A Page Designer can build new layout options directly in the storefront’s code while a Content Author picks from options that already exist and builds pages without modifying code.

A hero banner, for example, might offer a two-column layout and a full-width layout, each built and tested ahead of time.

When a Content Author needs a layout option that doesn’t exist yet, or an entirely new kind of block, the request goes to the Page Designer. If that need is a new drop-in, live catalog data, or a change to existing behavior, it becomes a developer task outside the Page Designer’s scope. See Author and developer tasks for how to file that request.

Templates for content pages

Page Designers create templates for common content pages, such as a landing page or a category page, so Content Authors can start from the right baseline instead of starting from an empty page. A Content Author selects the template that most closely matches their needs and builds from there.

Reference implementations

Reference implementations for this page are coming soon.