Authors

Settings

These settings control the overall behaviour and configuration of your Author module. From the module list view, click "EDIT SETTINGS" and select "Settings" to access this area.

Property Management

Property Management controls how fields are structured and displayed in the module item editor. You can define which fields are visible, group them into named sections, and configure the layout - giving content editors a cleaner, more focused editing experience.

Access Property Management from the module list view by clicking "EDIT SETTINGS" and selecting "Property Management". The interface is split into two panels: All Properties on the left and Visible Properties on the right.

Fields removed from the editor layout are only visually hidden from the editing UI - they are not deleted from the system and their stored data is preserved.

All Properties

The left panel displays all properties that are not currently assigned to any section in the editor layout. It is divided into two groups.

System Properties lists the built-in platform fields available for this module - such as Categories, Tags, Author, Parent, Template, and Layout. Drag any system property into a section on the right to make it visible in the item editor.

Custom Properties lists any user-defined fields that have been created for this module but are not yet assigned to a section. Up to 50 custom properties on BUSINESS plan and up to 100 custom properties on PRO plan. can be added to a module. Drag a custom property into a section on the right to include it in the item editor. Use the "+ Create New Property" link below the custom properties list to add a new field.

A Search field at the top of the page allows you to quickly locate any property across both the 'All Properties' and 'Visible Properties' panels.

Visible Properties

The right panel defines the actual structure of the module item editor. Only properties placed in sections here are rendered when an admin creates or edits an item. Fields are displayed within a responsive 3-column grid, and each field can be assigned a width using the grid control on the right of each property row.

Click the options icon () on any property row within the Visible Properties panel to access per-property actions.

Sections

Within the 'Visible Properties' panel, fields are organised into named sections. Sections help content editors navigate the item editor more easily, and can be reordered, renamed, and permission-controlled independently.

The Item Settings section is mandatory. It is always present, cannot be removed, and always contains the required Name and URL fields. Some system sections become available only when specific functionality is enabled - for example, enabling bookings makes an Event Properties section available.

Create New Section

Add new sections using the "+ Create New Section" link at the bottom of the Visible Properties panel.

Click the options icon () on any existing section header to manage it.

Frontend Form Code and Property Management

When generating Create/Edit form code for frontend submission of items (via the Component Manager), input fields are grouped and ordered to honour the Property Management configuration, including section headings. All fields are included in the generated form code, with non-visible properties placed in a section titled "Other".

Create New Property

Click the "+ Create New Property" link in the Custom Properties area of the 'All Properties' panel to add a new custom field to your module. Give the field a relevant name - this name becomes the data handle used to render the field's value in your layouts.

When creating a new property, the "Enable for Visible Properties" checkbox allows you to immediately assign the property to a section in Property Management without needing to drag it across manually afterwards. When this option is checked, a "Choose Section" dropdown appears so you can select the destination section.

Be sure to save the new custom property to apply it to your module setup.

The various input field types are listed below.

Once custom properties have been created, they appear in the 'All Properties' panel or in their assigned section in 'Visible Properties', where they can be further edited, deleted, or reorganised.

Converting Custom Properties

If you need to change a custom property's field type, click the options icon () on the property in the 'All Properties' panel and select "Edit", or click the options icon on the property in Visible Properties and select "Edit". Make the required field type change and save.

Changing field types can destroy or transform existing data associated with those fields. The table below describes the data transformation that will occur for each conversion.

Layouts

Layouts are the containers for an item's data to be rendered into, along with your custom markup. They are output by way of their associated component tag.
eg:

{% component type: "module", source: "Author", layout: "List" %}

When the component is output it loops through all of its relevant items and renders their data into the specified Layout, as defined by the layout parameter of the component tag.
In other words, the Layout acts as a type of template for displaying the Author's data.

You create your HTML markup or custom code and insert something similar to “data merge tags” by way of Liquid objects (eg: {{this['name']}} would render the item’s name).

List Layouts

Layouts of type ‘List’ are typically used for rendering repeating data sets. So, if the component you've configured retrieves 3 items, the List Layout will be rendered 3 times, each with a different item’s data being inserted within a defined markup.

Here is a simple example of how the Layout works, rendering a heading with the item's name as a link:

<div>
    <h2><a href="{{this['Url']}}">{{this['Name']}}</a></h2>
</div>

Using the example above of 3 items, the result on the website's front-end would look something like this:

<div>
    <h2><a href="/module-url/Author-1">Author 1</a></h2>
</div>
<div>
    <h2><a href="/module-url/Author-2">Author 2</a></h2>
</div>
<div>
    <h2><a href="/module-url/Author-3">Author 3</a></h2>
</div>

Detail Layouts

Layouts of type ‘Detail’ are typically used for rendering a single item's detail view, as displayed when browsing to that item’s unique URL.

Here is a simple example of how the detail Layout could look, rendering a heading with the item's name and the item's description field:

<div>
    <h2>{{this['Name']}}</h2>
    <div>
        {{this['Description']}}
    </div>
</div>

So, as per the example above, if viewing the first Author, the Layout would render something like this:

<div>
    <h2>Author 1</h2>
    <div>
        This is the description content of Author 1.
    </div>
</div>

Adding/Editing Layouts

You have the freedom of editing these layouts as you need to, with any HTML, CSS or JS as appropriate for your project. As well as creating unlimited, additional layouts.

Click the 'ADD NEW LAYOUT' button at the top to create additional list or detail layouts.

You can then add your custom markup and insert dynamic Liquid objects into your layout. Using the ' Properties' manager (found at the top right of the editor), simply click on the desired Liquid object name from the list to have it inserted at your cursors position within your markup, or click on the copy icon () to copy it to your clipboard.

Additionally, you can even add other modules inside of these Layouts, just as you might insert them onto a regular page. Simply click on the ' Components' manager (found at the top right of the editor) and follow the prompts to configure any additional component tags for the desired data output.

Table

This setting allows you to customise the column headers in the table/list view of module items in the admin. Allowing you to provide a better editing experience for you and the site admins.

For example, looking at a list of products, you’d likely want to see, and sort by, different columns of data than you would for a list of gallery slides or a list of staff members.

Reposition or Remove Table Columns

The Tables interface shows a representation of the current column headers which can be repositioned (via drag and drop), or deleted (via the x () icon, shown on hover).

Any changes made to the headers here are saved automatically.

Editing Table Columns

You can add additional columns to your module list view by clicking the “Add New Column” button, or you can edit existing ones via the pencil () icon (shown next to the column label on hover).

Column options are as follows:

Views

There are 3 different list views your Author items can be configured to display in, or switched to via the icons ( ) in the top right of the item view.

Depending on how the module is configured, some or all of these icons may be visible and the default view may be different to that of how other modules display.

List View ()

A direct listing of all the current module items, in a tabular layout, which can be clicked on to access their content. A typical view for singular, self contained modules.

Tree View ()

Relevant for nested module structures, this view shows all current module items, in a tabular layout, as folders (parent items) which can be clicked into to access a List View of their child module items.

Simplified Tree View ()

Relevant for nested module structures, this view shows all current module items (parent items) in a simplified list of items only. These can be reordered or nested via drag and drop or further edited via the auxiliary menu () visible next to the item on hover.

For more details on these view options see the module ‘Advanced Settings’ section above.

Import / Export

Found under the main auxiliary menu (), you can import/export data to/from your Authors module where you can then further update your items in bulk using a spreadsheet application and re-import item data in an Excel file format (.xlsx).

If re-importing to update existing items, be sure to maintain the same 'External ID' values from those exported items.

Export the current items in order to get a template import file you can use for importing new data. If you're starting from scratch, first create a dummy item with some sample data so you can see the import format needed.

Deleting

Found under the main auxiliary menu (), you can delete ALL Authors in bulk using the "Delete All Items" option.

Additionally, you can make bulk selections from the item list view (by ticking the checkboxes on the left of each item) and click the "DELETE SELECTION" button that will appear at the base of the list view.

Individual items can be deleted either by expanding the auxiliary menu to the right of each item and selecting the "Delete" option or when on the item's edit page, click the trash can icon () in the lower right of the page.

Bulk Apply Template

After making a selection of module items, using the checkboxes to the left of each item, an “Apply Template” option will become available in the main auxiliary menu () allowing you to assign a template, in bulk, to the selected items.

Settings

When you open a module item to create or edit it, the editor displays fields organised into sections as configured in Property Management. Only properties assigned to sections in Property Management are visible in the editor. The order of sections and fields, and the layout of each field, follow the Property Management configuration.

The mandatory Item Settings section is always present. It always contains the Name and URL fields, and will include any additional system properties that have been added to it in Property Management. If your screen does not show some of the options below, it is likely because those properties have not been added to any section in Property Management, or because of a site plan functionality restriction.

You can collapse any section by clicking on its header, to condense your workspace and help with moving between sections.

SEO

Component Tag with ‘isSearchResult’

To render the search results to the page and/or a collection, you need to configure the module’s component tag with the isSearchResult parameter set to true (see the Author component documentation for technical details).

{% component type: "module", source: "Author", layout: "List", isSearchResult: "true" %}

This will allow the component to reference search parameters in the resulting URL.

URL search parameters will override any corresponding parameters in the component. If no search parameters are present in the URL, isSearchResult will be ignored.

You may want to separate the search form from the component tag if you want a dedicated search results page, or where you have a search input in the header or footer of all pages as so searches could be made from any page.

This method also alleviates a side-effect of the isSearchResult configured component whereby it will output all indexed items by default if no search query has been specified (ie: when a user first navigates to a search page).

If you do want one single search page, with both search form and component and don’t want to initially list all results, another solution to this is to wrap the component tag in a Liquid condition which looks for the presence of the prop_KeyWords parameter in the URL, like so:

{% if request.request_url.params.prop_KeyWords %}
    {% component type: "module", source: "Author", layout: "List", isSearchResult: "true" %}
{% endif %}

Basic Search Form

A basic keyword based search form for Authors would be constructed like the following:

<form>
    <input type="hidden" name="prop_ModuleId" value="1234">
    <label>Keywords</label>
    <input type="text" name="prop_KeyWords" maxlength="255" value="{{request.request_url.params.prop_KeyWords}}">
    <input type="submit" value="Search">
</form>

This form element includes a prop_KeyWords text input, prop_ModuleId hidden input, a submit button and no form action attribute.

The prop_ModuleId hidden input tells the search which module to search (replace ‘1234’ with the ID of your module).

The prop_KeyWords text input allows multiple keywords to be entered for searching.

The search logic combines multiple keywords with an AND operator, so items will be returned only if they include ALL keywords entered.

Currently, searching does not support any manual logic operators to be used in the keyword input field (such as; AND, OR, NOT...)

When the form is submitted, prop_ModuleId and prop_KeyWords, along with their values, will be passed as URL parameters for the isSearchResult configured component tag to interpret.

By default, the search form has no action attribute, so it will redirect to the current page with the URL parameter appended to the current page URL.

You can, instead, separate the search form from the ‘site_search’ component, having the module component on a separate page and sending the search query to that page instead of the current page.

To do this, you’d add the other page URL slug to the form element. So if the other page was “/search-results”, you’d adjust the form to include an action attribute as such:

<form action="/search-results">

Advanced Search Form

Building further on the basic form structure above, you can add Author specific fields to search their contents, either individually or combined with other fields and/or keyword queries.

The search logic combines all field queries with an AND operator, so items will be returned only if they include ALL the queries entered.

The fields (providing they are available to the module) that can be search upon include:

• Name
• URL (Slug)
• SKU Code
• Release Date
• Expiry Date
• Site Search Keywords
• Rating
• Description
• Any ‘Default Properties’ (eg: Categories, Tags, Author...)
• Any ‘Custom Properties’
• Module specific ‘System Properties’ (Price, Product Dimensions, Unit Type, Capacity...)

To add these fields to your search form, create an appropriate input with the name attribute configured like prop_PropertyName.

So, if you were adding a search field for a custom property called “Vehicle Colour”, the form input might look like this:

<input type="text" name="prop_VehicleColour">

Follow this same format for most other properties. Although you may like to change the input type to suit the type of data required.

For example, if our above “Vehicle Colour” property was actually a dropdown field with predefined colour values, you may choose to create a <select> element instead, like so:

<select name="prop_VehicleColour">
    <option value="Red">Red</option>
    <option value="Blue">Blue</option>
    <option value="Green">Green</option>
</select>

After the search form has been submitted, you might also like to keep the search queries filled in the search form fields, for better usability. So to do this you can pull the query parameters out of the URL and into the input values, like so:

<input type="text" name="prop_VehicleColour" value="{{request.request_url.params.prop_VehicleColour}}">

Search Within Number Ranges

For property types such as dates, prices, ratings and numbers, you can search with a to-from/min-max range by adding _Min or _Max to the property name.

So let’s say you want to search for items within a certain date range, based on their release/expiry dates.

<input type="datetime-local" name="prop_ReleaseDate_Min">
<input type="datetime-local" name="prop_ExpiryDate_Max">

And to populate these fields with the searched values:

<input type="datetime-local" name="prop_ReleaseDate_Min" value="{{request.request_url.params.prop_ReleaseDate_Min | date: "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M"}}">
<input type="datetime-local" name="prop_ExpiryDate_Max" value="{{request.request_url.params.prop_ExpiryDate_Max | date: "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M"}}">

Searching for a minimum release date will return all items with a release date newer (or the same as) the query date. And likewise searching for a maximum expiry date will return all items with an expiry date older (or the same as) the query date.

Programmatically Search (without a form)

There may be times when you require the search results for a module based on constructed data, other than that of a user’s input into a search form.

You can achieve this with the use of the searchScope parameter on the module’s component tag (see the Author component documentation for technical details).

This parameter allows a search on the module without search parameters needed in the URL. Instead, search parameters are added to the value of this parameter. Therefore, this parameter can be used to output module specific search results from hard-coded (or Liquid constructed) values without the use of a search form.

The search queries are similar to that used in the above form based search method, but use JSON syntax for their construction.

Below is an example of a constructed searchScope configured component tag, with min/max release date search, keywords and multiple tags query:

{% component type: "module", source: "Author", layout: "List", searchScope: "{'prop_ReleaseDate_Min':'2018-07-01', 'prop_ReleaseDate_Max':'2018-07-31', 'prop_KeyWords':'Your Keywords', 'prop_ItemTags':['tag1','tag2']}" %}

The search logic combines all field queries with an AND operator, so items will be returned only if they include ALL the queries entered.