To
create a new content type in a site, open the Site Settings page, as
explained at the beginning of this article, and click Content Types in
the Galleries section of the page. This selection opens a page where you
can create or modify content types (see Figure 1).
Click the Create button on the toolbar to create a new content type. The page shown in Figure 2
opens. The first setting you need to set for a content type is the name
for the content type, followed by its description. The name and
description appear in the New drop-down in the document library or site
when the user opens it to select a content type.
Tip
It
is wise to name a content type in singular form (for example, Corporate
Financial Report, Board Meeting Presentation). This name appears under
the New button for document libraries and lists when you are creating a
new item and signifies to the user that clicking the option will create a
single document.
Next, select the parent
content type. This step is important because most of the time, you do
not want to start the content type from scratch but instead want to rely
on an existing content type. Selecting the parent content type is also
important because changing it can (but does not necessarily) affect the
child content type. For example, suppose you want to create a content
type named External Contact that has exactly the same settings as the
built-in Contact content type, but with additional columns to capture
the contact’s company address and company description (see Figure 3).
If you specify that the new
content type is the child of the existing Contact content type, you must
specify only the columns you want to add on top of the default Contact
columns. Also, if in the future you decide that all contacts should have
an additional column—for example, Birthday—adding it to the parent
content type Contact can also add it automatically to the child External
Contact.
After you select the content
type main settings, click OK to create the content type. This selection
opens the page where you can define the additional settings for the
content type. For example, you can add, edit, or remove columns; set
workflow settings; and perform other advanced settings (see Figure 4).
To add a column to a content type, scroll down to the bottom of the page shown in Figure 4,
where you can find links to either create a new site column for the
content type or add a column from the list of available site columns.