Writing the Content for the Portugal Odyssey Website and AI Assistant¶

Last updated: 15 June 2026 Who this guide is for: the person who writes the words and chooses the pictures for the public Portugal Odyssey website (no programming needed) What you will be able to do after reading it: log in, write and edit each page of the public website, publish your changes, and understand how what you publish also teaches the website's AI assistant to answer visitors' questions.

A note on how to deliver this guide: it lives here as the master copy so the team can keep it up to date. If you would prefer to read it in Portuguese as a printable PDF, just ask — we will produce one for you.

Table of Contents¶

The big picture, in plain words
A few words explained
Logging in
Finding the pages you can edit
The pages you manage and where they appear
Editing a page, step by step
Writing in more than one language
Saving versus publishing
How your words reach the AI assistant
Checking that it worked
When something does not look right
Writing well: tone and style
Who to contact

1. The big picture, in plain words¶

The Portugal Odyssey website has two parts that you, as the content author, feed with words and pictures:

The pages of the website itself — the home page, the "About" page, the "How it works" page, and so on. Whatever you write in these pages is what visitors read when they browse the site.
The AI assistant — the helpful chat box on the website where a visitor can type a question in their own words (for example, "What are the best wine routes in the Douro?") and receive a written answer. The important and slightly magical part is this: the assistant builds its answers from the very same content you publish. When you publish a new paragraph about the Douro, the assistant can start using that paragraph to answer visitors. When the pages are empty, the assistant honestly replies that it does not have information yet.

So your writing does double duty. It fills the website, and it teaches the assistant. This guide explains how to do both, because they happen through the same simple action: writing content and pressing Publish.

You do all of this through a friendly control panel in your web browser. You never touch any code, and you cannot break the website by writing or editing text.

2. A few words explained¶

Throughout this guide you will meet a small number of technical words. Here is what each one means, in everyday language. You only need a working sense of them; you do not need to memorise them.

CMS (Content Management System): the control panel where you write the words and choose the pictures that appear on the website, without needing a developer. Think of it as the "back office" of the website.
Strapi: the specific brand of CMS that Portugal Odyssey uses. When this guide says "the CMS" or "Strapi," it means the same thing — the control panel you log in to.
Content type: a kind of page or item you can fill in. "Landing Page," "About Page," and "FAQ Page" are each a content type. Each content type has its own set of boxes (called fields) for you to fill in.
Field: a single box you type into, such as a title, a paragraph, or an image slot.
Draft and Publish: a draft is a version only you can see while you work on it. Publishing makes it live for the public. Nothing you write becomes visible to visitors until you publish it.
AI assistant (Artificial Intelligence assistant): the chat box on the website that answers visitor questions in writing. "AI" simply means the computer is generating the answer rather than a human typing it live.
Locale (language version): the website speaks more than one language. A locale is one language version of your text — for example, the Portuguese version or the English version of the same page.
URL (web address): the address you type into the browser, such as cms.portugalodyssey.pt.

You will also occasionally hear the team mention "ingest" or "indexing." That is the behind-the-scenes step where the assistant reads your freshly published content so it can answer questions about it. You do not run that step yourself — it normally happens automatically when you publish. Section 9 explains it gently, and the team has a separate operations guide for the rare case when it needs a manual nudge.

3. Logging in¶

Open your web browser (Chrome, Safari, Firefox — any of them is fine).
In the address bar at the top, type cms.portugalodyssey.pt/admin and press Enter.
You will see a login screen. Enter the email address and password that José set up for you. (If you do not have these yet, or you have forgotten the password, contact José — see Section 13.)
After logging in, you arrive at the CMS home screen. The most important menu is on the left-hand side, called Content Manager. That is where all your pages live.

A small tip: the first time you log in, your browser may offer to save the password. Saying yes makes future logins quicker.

4. Finding the pages you can edit¶

On the left-hand menu, click Content Manager.
You will see two groups of content listed: Collection Types and Single Types.
A Single Type is a one-of-a-kind page, such as the home page — there is only one of it. Most of the website pages you edit are Single Types.
A Collection Type is a list of many similar items, such as a list of partners or a list of frequently asked questions. You add, edit, or remove items within it.
Click the name of the page you want to work on. The page opens with all its fields ready for you to edit.

5. The pages you manage and where they appear¶

These are the main pages that make up the public website and feed the AI assistant. Each one is a Single Type (a one-of-a-kind page) unless noted otherwise.

Page (content type)	Where it appears on the website	What you write there
Landing Page	The home page — the first thing visitors see	The headline, the welcoming introduction, the highlights of what Portugal Odyssey offers
About Page	The "About" / "Our story" page	The story of Portugal Odyssey: who you are, why the brand exists, what makes it special
How It Works	The "How it works" page	A clear explanation of the steps a traveller goes through to get a curated experience
Become a Partner Page	The page aimed at hotels, guides, and other partners	The invitation and explanation for businesses who want to join the marketplace
FAQ Page	The "Frequently Asked Questions" page	Common questions and their answers
Contact Page	The "Contact" page	How visitors can reach you, and any introductory text on that page

There are some additional, more specialised content types (for example, individual partner profiles and place galleries). Those are usually managed separately; this guide focuses on the six pages above, which are the heart of the public website and the assistant's knowledge.

6. Editing a page, step by step¶

Let us walk through editing a page from start to finish. We will use the About Page as the example, but every page works the same way.

From Content Manager, click About Page.
You now see the page's fields. Common kinds of field you will meet:
Short text fields (for a title or a subtitle): a single line. Just click and type.
Rich text fields (for paragraphs): a larger box with a small toolbar above it. Here you can write longer text and apply simple formatting — see the next point.
Image fields: a slot where you choose a picture from the Media Library (explained below).
Using the rich text toolbar. The toolbar above a rich text box lets you, without any code:
Make text bold or italic.
Create headings (larger titles that break your text into sections). Headings are helpful both for readers and for the AI assistant, because they signal where one topic ends and another begins.
Make bulleted or numbered lists.
Add a link to another web page. Write naturally, as you would in a word processor. You do not need to think about layout or fonts — the website applies the brand's design automatically.
Adding or changing a picture. Click the image field, then choose Media Library. The Media Library is the shared store of all pictures uploaded to the website.
To use a picture that is already there, click it and confirm.
To use a new picture, click Add new assets (or simply drag the picture file into the window), wait for it to upload, then select it.
A helpful habit: give your picture a sensible file name before uploading it (for example, douro-vineyard-sunset.jpg rather than IMG_4821.jpg). Clear names make pictures easy to find later.
As you work, the CMS keeps your changes as a draft (see Section 8). Nothing is public yet.

Take your time. You can leave a page and come back to it; your draft is waiting for you.

7. Writing in more than one language¶

The website speaks Portuguese, English, and Spanish. Each language is a separate locale (language version) of the same page, and each one needs its own text — the website does not translate automatically, because your brand voice matters and machine translation would flatten it.

Open a page in Content Manager.
Near the top of the page (usually on the right) you will find a language selector — a small dropdown that might say "Portuguese (pt)," "English (en)," or "Spanish (es)."
Choose the language you want to write. The fields now show that language's text.
Write or edit the text for that language, then publish it (Section 8). Repeat for each language you want to offer.

A practical approach: write the Portuguese version first (your strongest voice), publish it, then come back later to add the English and Spanish versions. A page can be live in Portuguese while you are still preparing the other languages.

8. Saving versus publishing¶

This is the single most important thing to understand, so it is worth being precise.

Save (draft): stores your work privately. Only people logged in to the CMS can see a draft. Visitors cannot. Saving often is a good habit so you never lose work.
Publish: makes the current version live for the public and makes it available to the AI assistant. This is the action that actually changes the website.

When you are happy with a page:

Press Save to be safe.
Then press Publish.
The page is now live. If you later make more edits, they stay as a new draft until you press Publish again — so the public keeps seeing the last published version until you choose to release the new one.

If you ever want to remove something from the public site, you can Unpublish it. Unpublishing also tells the assistant to stop using that content in its answers.

9. How your words reach the AI assistant¶

This section explains the "magic" so you can trust it and recognise when it is working.

When you press Publish, two things happen:

The website page updates with your new text and pictures, for visitors to read directly.
The assistant is notified that there is new content. Behind the scenes, the assistant reads your published text, breaks it into small passages, and stores them in a way that lets it find the right passage when a visitor asks a related question. The team calls this step ingesting or indexing the content. You do not do anything for this — pressing Publish is enough. It usually finishes within about a minute.

From then on, when a visitor asks the assistant something your content covers, the assistant finds the relevant passage you wrote and uses it to compose a clear, written answer — in the visitor's language. In effect, the assistant answers in your words.

Two honest caveats, so nothing surprises you:

If a page is empty or unpublished, the assistant will not invent an answer. It will say, politely, that it does not have information on that topic yet. This is by design — it would rather be honest than make something up. As you publish more content, the assistant gets better.
Right now (June 2026), the public site's content is essentially empty. That is expected: the website has only just gone live. As you fill in the pages above and publish them, both the website and the assistant come to life.

There is a rare situation — for example, a large batch of content added all at once, or a technical hiccup — where the team may want to manually re-run the "ingest" step to be sure everything was read. That is an operations task, not yours; it is documented separately for José and the technical team in the RAG Manual Re-Ingest and Verify Runbook. You never need to do it.

10. Checking that it worked¶

After you publish, you can confirm your changes in two easy ways:

Look at the website. Open the public site in a normal browser tab and navigate to the page you edited. If you do not see your change immediately, wait a moment and refresh the page (press F5, or the circular reload arrow). Browsers sometimes hold on to an older copy for a short while.
Ask the assistant. Open the chat box on the website and ask a question that your newly published content answers — for example, after writing the "About" story, ask "Why was Portugal Odyssey created?" If the assistant answers using your words, the content has been ingested successfully. If it still says it has no information, give it a minute and try again; if it persists, see the next section.

11. When something does not look right¶

Most issues fall into a few familiar buckets. Here is how to think about each.

"I published, but I do not see it on the website." First, refresh the page (F5). If it is still missing, check that you actually pressed Publish (not only Save), and that you were editing the correct language version (Section 7).
"I see it on the website, but the assistant does not seem to know about it." Give it about a minute and ask again — the assistant needs a short moment to read newly published content. If after a few minutes it still does not use your content, this is the one case to flag to José: he can re-run the "ingest" step manually using the operations runbook.
"I edited the wrong language by mistake." No harm done. Switch to the correct language version (Section 7) and make your edit there. You can leave the other language as it was.
"I want to undo something I published." Use Unpublish to take it off the public site, or simply edit it and publish the corrected version.

When in doubt, it is always safe to ask José before worrying — you cannot damage anything by editing or publishing text.

12. Writing well: tone and style¶

A few brand guidelines that keep the website and the assistant sounding like Portugal Odyssey:

Address the visitor respectfully, in the third person. In Portuguese, this means the formal register with the pronoun left implicit — for example, "O que pretende descobrir?" rather than the informal "O que queres descobrir?" or the Brazilian-style "O que você pretende descobrir?". (The team applies this same rule across the whole website.)
Use European Portuguese spelling, in the pre-1990-agreement style you prefer (for example, colecção, acção, directamente).
Write for a traveller, warmly but concretely. Specific, vivid detail ("small family vineyards in the Douro," "certified guides in Sintra") helps both the reader and the assistant far more than vague phrases.
Keep facts accurate and self-contained. Because the assistant answers using your text, a clear, factual paragraph becomes a clear, factual answer. If a sentence would confuse a reader, it will confuse the assistant too.
Headings help. Breaking longer text into short sections under headings makes pages easier to read and easier for the assistant to find the right passage.

13. Who to contact¶

For anything that this guide does not cover, or whenever something does not behave as described:

Contact José. In particular, flag him if you have published content and, after a few minutes, the AI assistant still does not seem to use it — that is the one case that may need a manual technical step on his side (he has the RAG Manual Re-Ingest and Verify Runbook for exactly this).

You cannot break anything by writing, editing, or publishing. The worst case is always recoverable, so please write freely and publish with confidence.