How to create new collections? What are the collection's fields?

[ztjona]

Hi,

I want to add a section of Teaching, not sure how to do it, in _config.yml.

collections:
  news:
    defaults:
      layout: post
    output: true
    permalink: /news/:path/
  projects:
    output: true
    permalink: /projects/:path/

I think I have to add something like this three rows? Where is the docs of the collections??

collections:
  news:
    defaults:
      layout: post
    output: true
    permalink: /news/:path/
  projects:
    output: true
    permalink: /projects/:path/
  teaching:
    output: true
    permalink: /teaching/:path/

But only adding this does not work.
I created a teaching.md in /_pages/ that is very similar to projects.md. And also created a folder /_teaching/ with a 1_teaching.md.

What I have to change in this file?

[george-gca]

We have a part for this in CUSTOMIZE.md, but I agree that we should elaborate it more.

When we say you should create a landing page for your collection, similar to _pages/projects.md, that means you should also pay attention to how the projects page is created, and make the changes accordingly.

For example, we use site.projects to access the projects files located in _projects/ inside _pages/projects.md to create the thumbnails for them. You can see that in these lines:

{% assign categorized_projects = site.projects | where: "category", category %}

{% assign sorted_projects = site.projects | sort: "importance" %}

So this is one change that you should make. Also note that when we include some other code inside, like in this line:

{% include projects_horizontal.liquid %}

in practice the code from _includes/projects_horizontal.liquid is inserted here, that's why inside this file we can use code like

{% if project.img %}

because the project variable was defined right above in _pages/projects.md, more specifically in:

{% for project in sorted_projects %}

That said, if you change the name of the variable inside your _pages/teaching.md, mind changing that also in the code that will use it. So it is not simply copy the page and rename it. You should understand how the values from the collection are accessed in the page, also how the values from the frontmatter of the new collection are accessed, and make changes when needed.

[royabradley]

I have read your explanation here, but I am still having trouble getting this to work in my case.

I am trying to set up a new collection called "Classroom" that is just like the Projects page, but with different content/files. I have

1. Added

classroom:
    output: true

to _config.yml

2. Created _classroom in the root directory

3. Created classroom.md in the _pages directory, copy-pasted the code from projects.md into this file, and updated the YAML front matter to

layout: page
permalink: /classroom/
title: classroom

Questions:

1. Exactly how do I modify the liquid code from projects.md to make this work in classroom.md?
2. Are there any other steps in order to complete the creation of a new collection that behaves like the "Projects" page?

[george-gca]

Remove everything that you don't need. To access your collection here, you should use site.classroom, like we use site.projects here:

al-folio/_pages/projects.md

Line 44 in 9d1e1c6

{% assign sorted_projects = site.projects | sort: "importance" %}

then loop through the items inside the collection like:

al-folio/_pages/projects.md

Line 52 in 9d1e1c6

{% for project in sorted_projects %}