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Content Sources

Connecting your content with Ninetailed to experiment and personalize.
Ninetailed does not store content. We leverage the MACH infrastructure and believe that Content Management Systems (CMS) already do perform this task well, while Ninetailed focuses on providing profiles and what content works best for each individual Audience. In order to map baseline content with personalized variants, we provide Content Source apps. To see how to use these Content Source apps, have a look at the Create section.

Step 1: Create a New Connection

Ninetailed Content Sources dashboard
Content Sources in Ninetailed
  • Go to the Content Sources page on your Ninetailed account, then click Setup Your First Connection. If this is not your first CMS connection, you can create a new connection by selecting New Content Source.
  • Select your Content Source.
The next steps vary depending on which Content Source you are connecting to.
Contentful
Contentstack
Hygraph
DatoCMS
  • Authorize the connection with your CMS. If you are not already logged into your CMS, you will be prompted to do so at this time.
  • After the authorization is complete, you will see the list of Contentful environments to which your current Contentful account belongs to. Choose the environment where you want to install Ninetailed.
  • When prompted to create the connection, you may optionally toggle off installing Merge Tags if you need to be conscientious about the number of content types you are using within your Contentful environment. Merge Tags are a content type that allows you to dynamically insert profile attributes into content.

Connecting an alias

For Contentful, Ninetailed allows you to connect to an environment alias. Contentful encourages using environment aliases to make it easier to publish and roll back your configurations and content. To connect an environment alias with Ninetailed, click "Setup an Alias Content Source" in your Content Sources tab.
Ninetailed does not get notified by Contentful when you change the target of an environment alias. In order to make sure that your Ninetailed configurations are synced correctly, make any change (e.g., changing a description) to one of your Ninetailed Experience or Ninetailed Audienceentries and publish it, or click the "sync content sources" button in your Ninetailed Dashboard.
  • Select the region to which your CMS project belongs
  • Authorize the connection with your CMS. If you are not already logged into your CMS, you will be prompted to do so at this time
  • After the authorization is complete, you will see the list of stacks to which your current Contentstack account belongs to in the region you selected during the prior authorization step. Choose the stack where you want to install Ninetailed.
To connect to Hygraph, you will need to generate a Hygraph auth token to populate within the Ninetailed dashboard.

Create Your Hygraph Token

  1. 1.
    Go to Project Settings in your Hygraph project. You can check out the Hygraph guide from here​
  2. 2.
    Create a Permanent Auth Token​
  3. 3.
    Initialize all models for the Content API Permissions
  4. 4.
    Select the following permissions for the Management API Permissions:
    • Create new roles
    • Read existing environments
    • Create new models
    • Read existing models
    • Update existing models
    • Delete existing models
    • Create new fields
    • Read existing fields
    • Update existing fields
    • Delete existing fields
    • Create new entries
    • Read existing entries
    • Update existing non-published entries
    • Update published entries
    • Publish non-published entries
    • Delete existing entries
    • Create new webhooks
    • Read existing webhooks
    • Update existing webhooks
    • Delete an existing webhook
    • Read stages
    • Update stages
    • Delete stages
    • Read public content views
    • Create public content views
    • Update public content views
    • Delete public content views
    • Can delete existing extensions in an existing project
    • Can add a new extension to an existing project
    • Can see existing extensions in an existing project
    • Can update existing extensions in an existing project
    • Can add app installations
    • Can update app installations
    • Can delete app installations
  5. 5.
    Finally, copy and paste your API token into your Ninetailed account, then click Set Hygraph Key
  • Authorize the connection with your CMS. If you are not already logged into your CMS, you will be prompted to do so at this time.
  • After the authorization is complete, you will see the list of projects to which your current DatoCMS account belongs to. Choose the project where you want to install Ninetailed.
  • Provide a name and (optionally) a description for the connection.
  • Click "Create Content Source". This will extend the content model of the selected project by adding three content types: Ninetailed Audience, Ninetailed Experience, and Ninetailed Merge Tag (unless toggled off when creating a Contentful connection).

Not seeing your CMS?

If your CMS is currently not supported, let us know by filling in our survey or getting in contact with us on how to use our API for non-CMS content.

Step 2: Add Experiences to Content Types

Next, extend your content model to support Personalizations and Experiments. While the Ninetailed content types are similar across the content management systems that Ninetailed connects to, the steps to extend a content model in each CMS varies.
Contentful
Contentstack
Hygraph
DatoCMS
After creating your content source by following the steps above, you will be directed to a configuration screen showing all of your content types.
Ninetailed Contentful content type configuration interface
Ninetailed's configuration screen
Select the content types that you want to add Personalizations and Experiments to. This will extend your content model to include a one-to-many reference field on those content types entitled "Ninetailed" (field name nt_experiences) that will reference entries of type "Ninetailed Experience".
  1. 1.
    Go to the content type definition for which you want to enable experiences
  2. 2.
    Add a Custom field type and add the following settings. Please make sure to exactly match these settings:
    1. 1.
      Change the Display Name to: Ninetailed
    2. 2.
      Change the Unique ID to: nt_experiences
    3. 3.
      Change the Selected Extension/App to: Ninetailed - Reference Field
    4. 4.
      Change the Referenced Content Type to: Ninetailed Experience
    Ninetailed Contentstack content type configuration interface
    Setting basic parameters to personalize a content type in Contentstack
  3. 3.
    Then go to the Advanced tab in that same custom field and add the following Config Parameter: {"field_path":"nt_experiences"}
    Setting advanced parameters to personalize a content type in Contentstack
  4. 4.
    Click save.
As a last step, you will also need to configure the referenced Content Type for Ninetailed Experiences.
  1. 1.
    Go to the Ninetailed Experience content type.
  2. 2.
    Click on the Variants field.
  3. 3.
    Click on the Referenced Content Type of that field. Remove Ninetailed Audience from this field, then select all content types that can reference experiences.
  4. 4.
    Click Save.
setting Ninetailed Experiences to support your newly personalized content type in Contentstack
Hygraph does not install a Ninetailed Experiences type, because the Hygraph integration supports only adding personalizations. See Legacy Model Personalization for details on adding personalizations.
After creating your content source by following the steps above, you will be directed to a configuration screen showing all of your content types.
Select the content types that you want to add personalizations to. This will extend your content model to include a one-to-many reference field on those content types entitled "Variants" (field name nt_variants) that will reference entries of your existing content types.
DatoCMS does not install a Ninetailed Experiences type, because the DatoCMS integration supports only adding personalizations. See Legacy Model Personalization for details on adding personalizations.
After creating your content source by following the steps above, you will be directed to a configuration screen showing all of your content types.
Select the content types that you want to add personalizations to. This will extend your content model to include a one-to-many reference field on those content types entitled "Variants" (field name nt_variants) that will reference entries of your existing content types.

Next Steps

You are now able to create Audiences and Experiences in your connected Content Source. In order to render them in your front-end, make sure to set up your delivery. We also recommend adding your customer data and configuring analytics to measure performance.
Setup - Previous
Getting Started
Next - Setup
Customer Data
Last modified 2mo ago