Content Collections
What Are Collections?
Collections are like playlists or folders in Gradual. They allow you to combine different types of content into a curated group that can then be featured on the content page of your community.
Collections vs. Tags
Both tags and collections allow you to group content. The biggest difference is collections show on the content page as their own section. Members can browse the different collections and you can easily link to them directly. Tags serve more to power related content and recommendations while collections are more curated playlists.
Best practices and examples
Collections can be used to group and present content based on interest, category, or some other common characteristic. You could create a collection of all the replays for a particular event or you could create collections for specific categories of content (e.g. News, Fireside Chats, etc).
Creating a Collection
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- Sign into your dashboard, navigate to Content and then to Collections
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Select the + New Collection button in the upper right and enter the necessary information like the name of the collection (this will be visible to users on the front end) and the Cover image.
The system will automatically generate a slug (URL) from the title you enter, but you can change the slug to be anything you'd like. The system will also automatically mark this collection as visible but you can toggle visibility off as you build the collection. - 3
- Save your work and the collection is created!
Adding Content to a Collection
Once the collection is created, you can add any content pieces and manipulate the order in which each content piece is displayed.
Note: The content piece must be created in the dashboard to appear in the Collection builder, so ensure all videos, blogs, etc. are created and uploaded before adding them to a Collection.
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Sign into your dashboard, navigate to
Content, and then to
Collections.
Select the Collection you'd like to add content to. - 2
- Select the + Add Content button in the center of the page, or in the upper right hand side.
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- This will open a content browser pop up, where you can select the type of content you'd like to add (Blogs, Videos, etc.) from the top menu.
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- Find & select the content piece(s) from the list, or search for the title in the search bar. You can select as many as you'd like and select 'Ok' to add them to the Collection.
Note: You can add content that is space-restricted to Collections, but that content will only display to those in the space and those space-restricted content pieces will not be included in the content count to anyone not in the space.
Currently, entire collections cannot be space-restricted.
Learn more about Spaces here.
Editing Collections
If you need to edit the Collection's title, slug, cover image or visibility, you can select the Collection's title from the list and select 'Edit Collection', or select the Edit button in line with the Collection's title from the list.
Reordering Collections
You can manipulate the order in which Collections appear on the front end from the Collections list in your dashboard. Select the hamburger icon beside the title of the Collection you'd like to move, and drag and drop it to the position you'd like. This will take immediate effect on the front end.
You can also use the sort arrow function to sort by 'name' or 'updated at' to re-order the collections.
Editing Content within a Collection
If you need to edit (add or remove) content from within a Collection, select the Collection's title from the list and either select the +Add Content button to add more pieces, or the 'Remove' icon in line with the content piece you'd like to remove.
The content within the Collection is ordered by the publish date so if you'd like to re-order the content in your Collection, you must edit and change the publish dates for each content piece individually.
Learn more about manually setting content publish dates here.
Featured Collections
On the front end, featured collection(s) are populated directly above the group of other Collections page on the Collections page, and on the Content page, featured collection(s) populate directly under the group of other Collections.
To feature a collection, you will navigate to the Collections tab in the dashboard, select the Edit icon in line with the Collection in the list, and select 'Feature this Collection'.
If you want to remove a Collection from the featured list, follow the steps above but select 'Remove from Featured'.