Create student features using Posts

The best uses for Posts don’t always need to be in date order. Maybe alphabetical order is more appropriate, or another order you define yourself. You may want to pick and choose your posts from several different boards, too. This is where “collections” come in. As an example, we’ll go through the process of setting up a student feature page, where student testimonials and profiles are showcased using Posts.

Setting up posts

Even if you plan to display them in a collection, posts still need a board to live on. In this case, the posts will be on three separate boards: Lower School, Middle School, and Upper School. The first step to creating a student feature is to set up the posts on their boards. We’ll set the student’s photo as the thumbnail image, the featured quote as the summary, and their profile as the body of the post.

Pulling into a collection

Once we have all three boards populated with posts of students, we’re ready to build our collection. On the Collections tab, start a new collection by clicking the green “+ New Collection” link. Then, click the “+ Add to Collection” button to add your student posts to the collection.

A window will pop up showing the 25 most recent posts. You can search by title to find the ones you want, and click on each post to select and add them to the collection. Once you add them to the collection, you’ll be able to drag and drop to reorder them. You can also move something all the way to the top or bottom using the three-dot menu on the right-hand side. And and rearrange until you’re happy with it, and then click the “Update” button.

Displaying on a page

Now that the collection is set, displaying it is as easy as putting a Post element on a page. For the student feature, a Grid format is an excellent choice. In the Content Filter element settings, simply pick your collection from the dropdown list. For the Content Details, we’ll display the post title, summary, and thumbnail, then link titles to post details. We’ll allow the details to Link To a popup, and display the post title, summary, body, and thumbnail.

That’s it! Our student feature is finished, and that’s all we had to do.