A CMS (content management system) is where you store and manage dynamic content on your site. You can reference dynamic content (i.e., content that changes) in your site design. Then, when you or a teammate creates or changes content in the CMS, it instantly updates on all the pages where it’s referenced.
In this lesson, you’ll learn:
- How to structure dynamic content in the CMS
- How to reference dynamic content on your site
- How to edit dynamic content
How to structure dynamic content in the CMS
Everything starts with creating a Collection. A Collection stores dynamic content in Collection items. Then, you can reference this dynamic content throughout your site.
Each Collection stores a different type of content. For instance, you can create Collections of blog posts, team members, job postings, recipes — anything you want. And each Collection is made up of Collection items (e.g., each Collection item in a “Team members” Collection would be a single team member).
Since the content uses the same structure (e.g., each team member would have the same content), Collections provide an efficient place to store and maintain this content.
How to define Collection fields
When you create a Collection, you decide what kind of structure each Collection item in that Collection will have. For example, if you’re creating a Collection of “team members,” you might want to add the name, picture, and email for each team member. You’ll add a Collection field for each type of content — in this case, you’d use a plain text field for the name, an image field for the picture, and an email field for the email.
You can also update and delete Collection fields — or the content in Collection fields — at any time.
Learn more about using Collection fields to structure Collections.
How to create content
Once you have your Collection fields in place, you can start creating Collection items. A Collection item is an individual section of content within the Collection.
For example, after you created your “Team members” Collection, you can begin adding content for each team member. In each Collection item (i.e., each team member), you’ll fill out the Collection fields you defined earlier (i.e., name, picture, and email address).
Pro tip: If you want to import a large number of Collection items at once, you can do so with a CSV file.
Learn more about creating and structuring Collections.
How to reference dynamic content on your site
Now that you’ve structured your Collection and added Collection items, you can add that dynamic content to your site. There are 2 ways to do this: by using a Collection list, or by designing a Collection page.
Collection lists
The Collection list element lets you reference dynamic Collection content on any site page (including static pages, like a site homepage). You can show or hide specific items with filters or conditional visibility based on values in the fields, and you can sort the content.
Collection pages
A Collection page is automatically created for every Collection item in your Collection. You can think of a Collection page as a design template for all of the items in your Collection — every Collection item in your Collection will use the design you create on the Collection page.
When you design a Collection page, you can add dynamic content by referencing Collection fields. And when you edit a Collection page’s design or dynamic references, all Collection pages for items in that Collection will automatically update.
Note: Elements added to a Collection page are static until you connect them to Collection fields.
How to edit dynamic content
You can edit or add content to your Collection at any time. Editing or adding content can be done from the Designer or the Editor.
