Content collections

Content collections are lists of structured items your site can show: blog posts, team members, endorsements, frequently asked questions, or anything else with fields you define. You edit items in the workspace, publish the ones that are ready, and your site reads them wherever a page lists or links to that collection.

Finding Content

Open Website in your workspace sidebar, then select Content. The list shows every collection your organization has, how many of its items are published, and whether it is readable by your site.

Creating a collection

Select New collection. You can start from a template or from scratch:

• Blog posts -- title, summary, rich-text body, cover image, published date, an author from your Team collection and categories. Creating a blog also creates Team and Categories collections if you do not have them.
• Team members, Endorsements, Issues, FAQ and Testimonials -- the same collections Website Lite pages can show in their Team, Endorsements, Issues and FAQ sections.
• Categories -- simple named groups other collections can reference.
• Custom -- start with a single Name field and add your own. The number of custom collections depends on your plan.

Give the collection a name (and, for a custom one, what a single item is called). Templates come with their fields ready; a custom collection opens its settings so you can add fields.

Fields

Open a collection and select Settings to see its fields. Every collection has one title field, a plain-text field that names each item and sets its web address. You can add fields of these kinds:

• Plain text and Long text for names, headlines and paragraphs.
• Rich text for formatted body copy with headings, lists, quotes and links.
• Image with alt text.
• Link, Email and Phone.
• Number, Date and Date and time.
• Switch for yes or no, and Color for a hex color.
• Option for one value from a list you define.
• Reference for one item from another collection, and Multi-reference for several, in the order you choose.

Labels can change at any time. A field's key and kind are fixed once saved, so to change a kind, remove the field and add a new one. Removing a field deletes its value from every item, and the editor asks you to confirm before it does. Fields that come with a template cannot be removed, so pages that already use them keep working.

Adding and publishing items

Open a collection and select New, or select an item to edit it. The editor shows a control for each field. The item's address is made from its title until you edit it yourself.

Items start as drafts. Select Publish when an item is ready; only published items appear on your site. You can also select several items in the list to publish, unpublish, archive or delete them together. Archived items stay in the workspace but are hidden from the site.

To reorder a small collection by hand, drag the handle at the start of each row while no search or filter is applied. Use the sort menu to see items by name or by when they last changed.

Public or private

Each collection is readable by your site by default. Turn off Readable by your site in the collection's settings to keep it private: nothing in a private collection reaches your site, and other collections cannot show references to it.

On your site

On Website Lite, the Team, Endorsements, Issues and FAQ sections of a page can show a collection instead of items typed into the page. On a site built with the full Website builder, every public collection is available to the builder as data you can list on a page, link between, and give its own page per item. Changes you publish appear on the site within a minute; no republish is needed.

Limits by plan

Your plan sets how many custom collections, items and fields you can have. Template collections do not count toward the custom limit. The editor tells you when a limit is reached; see Managing billing and your plan to upgrade.