A collection is a set of things you keep on the site that are not pages, posts or products: projects, testimonials, staff, venues, anything you want to list and reuse. You decide what each thing is made of, add the things, and show them wherever you like. You do not need a developer or a deploy.
Three words come up all the time. A field is one piece of information about a thing, such as its name or a photograph. An item is one thing in the collection, with a value for each field. A list is a block on a page that shows many items.
After this chapter you can create a collection, add items, show them on a page, give each its own page and choose which items a list shows and in what order.
/ followed by the key, so /projects.Every collection starts with a Title field. You can rename it, but not remove it. Add the others on the Fields tab, which admins see:
Removing a field removes its value from every item at once, and you are asked to confirm. Changing a field's type is refused once any item has a value for it.
The Items tab is a table. The up and down arrows on each row change the order, which is the collection's own order and the default order of every list. Tick Hidden, on the row or in the form, to take an item out of every list and its own page without deleting it.
Set Link the whole item to Yes to turn each item into a link to its own page. Pages and blocks covers the other list settings, such as the slider's arrows and paging through long lists.
You design one item from ordinary blocks, and the list repeats it for every item. To make a block show a field, connect it instead of typing the content in.
What a block can connect to:
Switch on Hide when the link is empty on an Icon, Button or Link so an item with no link shows nothing. That suits a team list where not everyone has a social profile. A linked Icon still needs a label, typed in or connected. A block you leave unconnected shows its own text or placeholder, which is also what the editor shows before anything is connected.
With Items have their own page ticked, the collection gets an item template, named after it, such as “Projects item page”. Open it from Content → Templates, or from the collection's Settings tab, where the link is called Edit item page.
Build it as you build a list item, with Text, Image, Button and Link blocks connected to the page's own item. One template makes the page for every item. A hidden item, or a collection with item pages switched off, shows a page-not-found.
A list's Filter has one entry for each field that can be filtered. Every entry you set must match.
The Order list starts with Collection order, the order from the Items tab and the default, then Newest first and Oldest first. After those come the Title and every Text, Number, Date, Date & time, Choice and Yes/no field, each in both directions: A–Z and Z–A for text, low to high and high to low for numbers, earliest first and latest first for dates, no first and yes first for Yes/no. A Choice sorts in the order of its options on the Fields tab, “in list order” or “reverse list order”, not alphabetically. An item with no value for the field always sorts last, whichever direction you choose.
A Date & time field is a date with a time of day, in the site's own time zone, which an admin sets in Settings → Site under Time zone. A plain Date has no time and no zone. Changing the time zone changes how every stored date and time is shown, not the moments themselves.
Rename a Choice option on the Fields tab by editing its text in place. Every item that held the old text then holds the new one. Removing an option is refused while any item still holds it, unless you renamed it in the same save. Rename it, or change those items first, and then remove it.