Collection Manager

Collections are structured data stores that page builder widgets can read from. A collection defines a shape — a set of typed fields — and a set of items that conform to that shape. For example, a "Team Members" collection might have fields for name, photo, title, and bio; a widget on the about page then renders those items as a staff grid.

Access is restricted to super-admin users. This is a developer-facing tool — changing collection definitions can break widgets that depend on them.

System Collections

Two collections are pre-installed and maintained automatically:

• blog_posts — all published blog posts, sourced from the Pages table.
• events — all published events.

System collections are read-only. Their field definitions cannot be edited or deleted, and they cannot be removed.

Custom Collections

To create a custom collection, click New Collection and fill in:

• Name — a human-readable label (e.g. "Team Members").
• Handle — a machine-readable identifier auto-generated from the name (e.g. team_members). The handle is used by widgets to reference this collection and cannot be changed after creation.
• Source type — set to Custom for manually managed collections.
• Description — internal notes about what this collection is for.
• Public — when enabled, this collection can be queried by public-facing page widgets. CRM and financial data is excluded from the public surface regardless of this setting. Disable for any collection containing sensitive or internal information.
• Active — inactive collections are hidden from widget configuration but their data is preserved.

Fields

After creating a collection, use the Fields repeater to define its shape. Each field has:

• Key — the machine-readable field identifier (e.g. photo, job_title).
• Label — the human-readable label shown in the item editor.
• Type — the data type: text, textarea, rich_text, number, date, toggle, image, url, email, or select.
• Required — whether this field must have a value for the item to save.
• Help text — optional guidance shown below the field in the item editor.
• Options — for select fields only: a list of allowed values.

Fields cannot be reordered after items have been added without risk of data misalignment — plan the field structure before adding content.

Collection Items

Once a collection is defined, click through to its edit page and use the Items tab to add, edit, reorder, and delete records. Each item presents a form based on the collection's field definitions.

Deleted Records and Trash

When you delete a custom collection or collection item, the record is soft-deleted — it is hidden from normal views but kept in the database so it can be restored if needed. System collections cannot be deleted.

Viewing trashed records

Use the Trashed filter above the table to control which records appear:

• Without trashed (default) — only active records are shown.
• With trashed — active and deleted records are shown together. Deleted records can be identified by the Restore action in their row.
• Only trashed — only deleted records are shown.

The same Trashed filter is available on the Items tab within each collection.

Restoring a deleted record

Find the record using the Trashed filter set to With trashed or Only trashed, then click Restore in the row actions. The record is immediately returned to active status.

Permanently deleting (purge)

Force-delete permanently removes a record from the database. This action is restricted to super-admin users and cannot be undone. Force-delete appears as an action on trashed records only when you are logged in as a super-admin. Force-deleting a collection will also permanently destroy all of its items.