Organizing Your Digital Content For Success in Artisan 5

Way back in the prehistoric days with Storybook Creator 2, we started managing our digital content. The awesome thing then was that we could add keyword tags to our content to make it easier to find.

Then, along came Storybook Creator 3, and suddenly the new content we purchased was already keyword tagged for us! That was amazing!

And that's when I stopped worrying so much about organizing my digital content.

Fast forward to the present day when we have Artisan 5. The Content Manager changed a bit in Artisan 5. We don't have the content carousel anymore, which is a little sad because it was nice to pull up one kit and see all of the content in it. It was a fun visual. But the carousel was really a big memory sucker … at least it sure was if you had more than a handful of art kits.

Now we have a streamlined Content Manager that groups everything in the sidebar on the left. You see a Library section that lists the types of content you have: Built-in Kits, Commercial Art Kits, Font Kits, and Personal Art Kits. This is where you can view the lists of everything you have in each of these content types. These really don't change … when the content comes in, it gets assigned to one of these spots.

The next way to organize in the sidebar is My Categories. This is what I'll be explaining more today.

And the third way to organize is Tags (which used to be Keywords in earlier versions, but it's the same thing).

Why You Should Use “My Categories”

In earlier versions, I really didn't see the point in categorizing my content. I relied heavily on the Tags. When I wanted something particular, I would filter through the Tags for what I wanted.

In Artisan 5, I just don't find my Tags to be the most useful way to find what I'm looking for. Maybe with all of my recent re-installs, I've realized just how much awesome content I forget that I have! It's way too cumbersome to scroll through my Commercial Art Kits list, and they are all listed in alphabetical order, which really is no help at all.

Categories allow me to loosely group my content by its use. I say “loosely” for a reason. Categories are not meant to take the place of keywords/tags, so I'm not going to get really specific with them. That would just create another huge list.

Here's how easy it is:

When you open your Content Manager, the My Categories folder is below the Library folders. When you first look at it, you see just two options … Kits not in any category, and Sample. I clicked on the drop down next to Sample and deleted it.

To create your first category, click once to select My Categories and you'll see an arrow on the right side. In the drop down box that appears, select Add a category. Then just type your first category in the box.

Once you have some category folders set up, click on Kits not in any category. This will show all of your uncategorized kits in the field on the right.

You can select and drag kits individually into categories, or select multiple kits and drag them all into one category. The cool thing is, you can add a kit to more than one category.

Once you've worked through some kits, go ahead and click on Kits not in any category again and it will remove the kits you've already categorized. This way you won't have to keep scrolling and scrolling.

Now that you have some kits categorized, this is what it looks like when you want to search by category when you're working in a project.