Component Content Management

Content components are small fragments of text, pieces of media like graphics, or interactive elements of a web page, that are assembled into large modular documents in a structured publishing process.

What exactly is a component? It can be something as small as a legal copyright statement, the first few steps in a process that are shared by many processes, or an important branding message like a product name or tagline. Reuse allows the core component to be edited and maintained in one place, and then be assembled into thousands of documents wherever it is needed.

In DITA, a component is a DITA Topic, a piece of content that is meaningful when standing alone. It may also be a subtopic, which can be assembled into another topic or into a DITA Map by using DITA's "conref" (content reference) mechanism (a sophisticated include mechanism).

In component content management, the content management system (CMS) keeps track of usage of all components, so you know which documents will be changed if you change the single source original component.

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