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Guides → Content editor onboarding in SGEN
Content editor onboarding SGEN
| Field | Value ||---|---|| Audience | sgen-admins || Page type | tutorial || Area | _workflows/role-onboarding || Updated | 2026-05-14 |How to hit the ground running as a Content Editor
As a Content Editor at your business, your job lives across four areas of the SGEN admin: Pages, Blog, Media Library, and Discussions. You write, edit, publish, and moderate — inside a role that is deliberately scoped. This guide walks you through your first day, your daily routine, and the weekly and monthly hygiene that keeps the site healthy.
You will not need — and do not have access to — the settings panels, user management, or theme controls. If something is missing from your left navigation, that is intentional. Ask your site admin if you believe something is wrong.
What is this for?
This guide is your orientation as a new Content Editor on SGEN. By the end you will know where each surface lives, how drafts and published content relate, what your daily rhythm looks like, and the handful of things that catch new editors off guard.
The Editor role in SGEN sits one step below Admin. An Editor can create, edit, and publish pages and blog posts. An Editor can upload media, moderate comments, and reply to readers as the brand. An Editor cannot change the theme, edit site settings, manage users, or permanently delete content without moving it to Trash first.
These limits are intentional. They protect the site from accidental configuration changes while giving you full creative control over content.
Good use cases
Example 1: Day one — confirm your surfaces and scan the queue.
a teammate logs in as a new Editor on the your business site. She checks the left navigation: Blog, Pages, Media Library, and Discussions are all present. Settings, Users, and Appearance are not visible — correct for the Editor role. She opens Blog, clicks the Draft tab, sees two posts waiting, opens one, reads it, and saves it without publishing. Draft count stays at two. No harm done.
Example 2: Write and publish a new blog post.
Grace opens Blog → Add New Post, types the title "Our Favourite Brewing Methods for 2026," writes the body, picks the category "Brewing Tutorials," adds tags "pour-over" and "aeropress" one at a time, and uploads a hero image via the in-editor media picker. She clicks Save as Draft — the post row appears in the Draft tab. She previews once, makes a small copy change, then clicks Publish. The post moves to the Published tab and is live at its public URL within seconds.
Example 3: Restore a page revision after a bad edit.
Grace updated the "About" page and accidentally deleted a paragraph. She opens Pages, clicks the "About" row's View History link, sees four revisions listed newest-first, clicks Preview on yesterday's version, confirms the missing paragraph is there, clicks Restore, and confirms the modal. SGEN saves the current (bad) version as a new revision before swapping — making the restore itself reversible. Full round trip: under 30 seconds. See pages/02 and blog/03 for the same flow on blog posts.
What NOT to use this for
- Changing the theme or global design.
Appearance is outside the Editor role. If a design change is needed, raise it with the site admin.
- Adding or removing other users.
The Users area is outside the Editor role. If a new team member needs access, the site admin creates the account.
- Changing site settings.
Email routing, cookie consent, payment configuration — none of these are Editor concerns. Settings panels are not visible to your role.
- Deleting media that other posts use.
Before removing an image from the Media Library, confirm no live page or post references it. There is no built-in usage check — deleting an in-use image produces a broken image placeholder on the public site immediately.
- Publishing without a second read.
The Editor role can publish directly with no mandatory approval step. If your content needs a sign-off, save as Draft and share the Preview link with your reviewer before clicking Publish.
How this connects to other features
Evergreen site pages (About, Contact, Brewing Guide) live here. The edit flow, draft/publish toggle, and page hierarchy you will use every week.
SGEN stores up to 10 revisions per Published page. Preview an older version and restore it in under 30 seconds.
Your primary editorial surface. Drafts, publishing, categories, tags, featured images, and post settings.
Categories drive public archive pages. Tags label individual posts. Monthly housekeeping keeps them clean.
The same 10-revision safety net that exists for pages applies to blog posts. Bad publish? Restore the prior version from View History.
Every image you add to a post or page flows through here. Upload once, use anywhere across the site.
Daily moderation queue. Approve real comments, mark spam, trash junk, and reply to readers as the brand.
Before you start
- Your site admin has created your account and assigned the Editor role.
You will receive a login link by email from SGEN.
- You are signing in at your site's SGEN admin URL.
For your business, your admin will share this on your first day.
- The left navigation is visible and shows Blog, Pages, Media Library, and Discussions.
If any of these are missing, contact your site admin — your role may not be fully configured.
- You have a modern browser (Chrome, Firefox, or Edge) and a stable internet connection.
Where to go
The four areas you will use as a Content Editor, and where they live in the left navigation:
| Area | Left nav path | What you do there |
|---|---|---|
| Blog | Blog | Write posts, save drafts, publish, review revision history |
| Pages | Pages | Edit evergreen pages — About, Contact, Brewing Guide |
| Media Library | Media Library → All Media Files | Upload images, copy asset URLs for use in posts |
| Discussions | Discussions → All Discussions | Approve comments, mark spam, reply to readers |
You will not see Settings, Users, or Appearance in the left nav — those are Admin-only areas. If you need something from those areas, ask your site admin.
Steps
1. Check the Drafts queue each morning
Open Blog and click the Draft tab. The count shows how many posts are waiting for editing or publishing. For your business a healthy queue is two to three — enough for a content buffer, short enough that nothing goes stale.
Scan each draft: open it, check if it needs copy edits, and either polish-and-publish or leave it as a Draft with a note in the body for your next session.
Repeat for Pages → Draft tab. Page drafts are less frequent but should not pile up — a page sitting in Draft for more than a month usually signals a decision is overdue: publish it or trash it.
2. Write or edit a post (blog or page)
- Open Blog → Add New Post for a net-new post,
or click Edit on an existing row to revise one.
- Enter your title.
The URL slug auto-generates from the title — you can override it in the Post Settings panel on the right.
- Write the body using the content editor.
Inline formatting (bold, italic, links, headings) lives in the editor toolbar.
- On the right panel, set:
Category (required — pick one from the dropdown), Tags (add one at a time, not in bulk), Featured Image (click to open the media picker and select from the library).
- Click Save as Draft to save without publishing.
Click Publish to make it live immediately.
Drafts are never public. A Draft post does not appear on the blog archive or in search results until you publish it. You can share a Preview link with teammates — that link shows the draft exactly as it would appear live.
The same flow applies to Pages — open Pages → Add New Page or click Edit on an existing row. Pages do not use categories or tags, but they have the same Draft → Published toggle and the same 10-revision history as blog posts.
3. Moderate comments in Discussions and reply to readers
Open Discussions → All Discussions and click the Pending tab. The tab count shows how many comments are waiting for a decision. For your business, anything over five is worth clearing before the workday fills up.
For each Pending row, choose one of the inline actions:
- Approve — makes the comment publicly visible under the post.
- Spam — hides the comment and flags the sender's email for future filtering.
- Trash — hides the comment; it can be recovered from the Trash tab if needed.
If a comment deserves a direct brand reply, click View to open the detail, scroll to Reply in thread, type your response, and click Reply. Your reply threads under the original comment on the public post, marked as coming from the site.
When spam arrives in volume — say, 14 promotional comments hit the Pending queue overnight — select all rows on the page using the header checkbox, pick Mark as Spam from the Bulk actions dropdown, and click Apply. Result: Pending drops from 14 to 0, Spam count rises by 14.
Weekly and monthly cadence
Weekly:
- Publish two to three posts per week.
By the end of each week confirm the Published tab count in Blog increased by at least two.
- Review the Media Library for unnamed files (
IMG_XXXXpattern).
Rename before they accumulate. Accepted types: JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, PDF, MP4, MOV, AVI, DOC, DOCX. Maximum upload size: 10 MB. SGEN automatically downsizes images wider than 2048 px. SVG is not accepted on this version — export as PNG before uploading.
- Audit revision history on any page or post you edited heavily this week.
The 10-revision cap fills faster than expected when multiple editors are active. SGEN keeps only the last 10 revisions per Published item — for both pages (see pages/02) and blog posts (see blog/03).
Monthly:
- Clear the Trash tabs in Blog and Pages.
Permanently delete only what you are certain you will never restore. Do not permanently delete posts that have approved public comments attached — deleting the parent post orphans the comment thread in Discussions permanently.
- Open Blog → Categories, scan for misspellings or duplicate category names,
and rename or merge as needed. Each category has its own public archive page — a rename changes the public URL, so do this carefully on high-traffic categories.
- Open Blog → Tags, scan for duplicates or typos,
and clean up one tag at a time. Avoid renaming multiple tags in rapid succession — add or rename them individually, confirm each saves before moving to the next.
- Check that every published post has a category assigned.
Filter Blog by Published, scan the Category column. Posts without a category are harder for readers to find and weaken the public archive pages. Reassign by opening the post, updating the Category selector in the right panel, and clicking Update. The post stays Published — only its taxonomy changes.
What success looks like
At the end of your first month as a Content Editor on the your business SGEN site, a healthy state looks like:
- Blog Published tab shows 8-12 posts live, with 2-3 added since you started.
- Blog Draft tab has 1-3 posts in flight —
not empty (pipeline is healthy), not overflowing (nothing is stuck).
- Discussions Pending tab is at 0 or near-0 each morning after your moderation sweep.
- Media Library has no files named
IMG_XXXX—
every file is descriptively named and findable by the picker search.
- No page or post has had its revision window lapse without a review.
What to do if it does not work
You cannot see Blog, Pages, or Media Library in the left navigation.
Your account may not have the Editor role assigned, or the role may be misconfigured. Contact your site admin and ask them to verify your account under Users → your email address. The role field should show Editor.
You clicked Publish but the post is still showing as Draft.
This can happen if a required field is missing — most often the Category field. Check the right panel for any fields highlighted in red or marked required. Fill them in and click Publish again.
You saved a post and the revision count is stuck at the same number.
Revisions are only created on Published content. Drafts do not generate revision entries — only saves to a Published page or post produce a new revision snapshot. If you need a change log for draft iterations, keep notes manually in the post body before each save.
You uploaded an image but it is not appearing in the media picker.
The picker loads images from the library — if the upload succeeded, the image should appear immediately. Try refreshing the editor tab (your draft auto-saves every few minutes before the reload). If the image still does not appear, open Media Library → All Media Files directly and confirm the upload is listed there. If not, the upload likely failed silently — try again with the file under 10 MB in JPG, PNG, or WebP format.
You tried to restore a page revision but the Restore button is missing.
Restore is only available on Published pages and posts. If the content is currently in Draft status, publish it first, then open View History — the Restore action will appear on all prior revisions.
A comment you approved is not showing on the public site.
Check Discussions → Settings to confirm comments are enabled for the content type. Also confirm that the individual post or page has comments turned on in its own settings panel — the per-post override can disable comments even when global settings allow them. If both settings are on and the comment still does not appear, clear your browser cache and reload the public page.
Other roles on this site
Each role on a SGEN site has its own onboarding guide. Use these links to understand what your teammates own — or to share the right guide with a new team member.
| Role | What they own |
|---|---|
| Marketing Manager | Analytics, lead forms, popups, and the blog calendar |
| Ecommerce Manager | Orders, products, coupons, and fulfillment cadence |
| SEO Specialist | SEO audit grid, redirects, robots.txt, Search Console |
| Developer | Custom CSS, Custom Codes, redirects, SG-Builder Additional CSS |
| Support Agent | Read-only admin lookups, ticket triage, escalation paths |
| Platform Admin | Site provisioning, user management, billing, security cadence |
| Partner / Agency | Multi-client delivery, white-label, reseller billing |
Related reading
- Create and manage pages
- Review page revisions
- Create and manage blog posts
- Organize blog with categories and tags
- Review blog post revisions
- Upload and manage media
- Moderate comments and reviews
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