Collection items overview

Collection items are the individual data records in each collection. A collection item can be a single blog post, an author, a product, and so on. Each collection item can have values for all or some of the collection fields that constitute the structure of that collection. These values can be connected to your design elements and settings to populate them dynamically. Even though each collection item will have an automatically generated dynamic collection page, it can also be featured in collection lists on any of your pages. Let’s learn more about collection items!

In this lesson

1. Creating collection items
2. Updating collection items
3. Editing draft items
4. Unpublishing individual items
5. Editing individual collection items
6. Managing collection items in bulk
7. Scheduling collection items

Creating collection items

Once you’ve created a collection, you can choose to add dummy content so you can start designing quickly, or you can create items manually, import items from a CSV file, or import them through the CMS API using Zapier or webhooks.

Generating dummy content

When there are no items in a collection you have the option to generate some dummy content. Dummy content allows you to start designing and building inside the project right away, even if you don’t already have the actual content.

At the moment, it’s not possible to generate dummy content for Ecommerce collections.

Creating items manually

You can start creating items manually by opening the CMS panel or the Ecommerce panel, selecting a collection and clicking the + New Item button.

Creating a new item

When you create a new CMS item, you can choose to:

• Create this new item. It will be staged for publish and will go live on your site next time you publish your site
• Publish your item right away (without waiting for the next site-wide publish to take place)
• Save as Draft if you aren’t quite ready for the item to go on the live site
• Cancel to discard changes

Need to know: Publishing and updating individual items will also publish any items referenced in reference and multi-reference fields.

At the moment, it’s not possible to publish individual products in the Ecommerce products collections.

Importing content into a collection

If you already have the content structured in a CSV file you can easily import it into your collection and map it to existing fields or new fields.

Resources

• Learn more about importing content into your collections

To use the API and tools like Zapier, check out the following resources:

• Importing items using Zapier
• Intro to Webflow API and webhooks

Updating collection items

You can update collection items whenever you want to right from the Designer or the Editor. When you’re updating an existing item, you can either save the changes to go live at the next site-wide publish, or publish the item right away to push the content changes to your site. You can also save it as a draft or cancel to discard the changes.

Editing draft items

You can edit draft items as many times as you need and keep choosing to save them as a draft until you’re ready to publish them. Once ready, the item can be staged for publish or published instantly to your site.

Unpublishing individual items

If you want to unpublish an item, you can save it as a draft. This will unpublish the item on your next project-wide publish. 

You can’t currently unpublish an individual item without publishing the whole site.

Publishing restrictions

In some cases, publishing individual items would break your site. In these instances, we prevent you from being able to publish single item updates. These instances include:

• Your site hasn’t been published
• The structure of the collection for that item (or a referenced item) has changed
• You have multiple domains published at different times
• The item’s references create circular dependencies (for example, a blog post has an author, the author has a client, and the client has a blog post)

In each of these situations, the fix is simple: publish your entire site (to all domains) to make sure everything’s in sync.

Editing individual collection items

A collection is a living, breathing database — it’s constantly growing as you add more items to your collection. You can make changes to existing collection items or create new ones at any time in the Designer or the Editor.

Managing collection items in bulk

Especially when working with a large database of content, bulk-editing can be a lifesaver. You can sort or search your content to determine what to edit.

Sorting and searching for collection items

With a collection open, select the pin icon in the top right corner of the list to show or hide fields in the collection. You can sort alphabetically or numerically by clicking on the column heading. Using the search bar is another quick way to find exactly what you want to edit.

Managing collection items in bulk

With your items sorted or refined, you can now edit multiple items. Click on the Select button in the top action bar to activate bulk editing.

You can select your items and perform any of these bulk actions:  

• Draft - useful if some items are not yet ready to be published
• Archive - pulls them from the project, but keeps them accessible from the CMS in the Designer or the Editor
• Delete - permanently removes the collection items

Pro Tip
When in bulk editing mode, SHIFT-click to select a range of items.

Scheduling collection items

Scheduled publishing lets you prepare content releases in advance and have them pushed live automatically. This feature is only available on Hosted CMS, Business, and Ecommerce Plans. Learn how to use scheduled publishing.