Channel Listing

Channel

Enter the channel slug, aka, the “handle” or shorthand term created by the web developer to refer to the channel in the site's code. News is most often “news,” Events are typically “events,” etc. This is the most basic information needed for a Channel Listing because it provides instruction for where to get the data. The other fields allow you to refine the data and how it is displayed.

Category

Limit the data retrieved to selected categories. ❕Note: Categories must be assigned to the entries for this to work. An example of this would be limiting a department’s news stories on a page about research to only news categorized as “research.”

The order refers to how multiple entries (such as news stories) will display where you add the Channel Listing.

Primary Order Field (formerly “Order Field)

Enter what part of the channel entry the listing should use to order. Like the channel slug, this needs to use the exact word and letter case that exists in the site’s code. Some common ones are listed. For example, postDate is a typical method for news Channel Listings because it references the date the news was published, but title would be more likely for a collection of resources.

Some entry types may contain a “Featured” switch, such as Directory entries. When this is available, you can sort by Featured, such as featuredItem or featuredFaculty. This will bring any entries with the “featured” switch on to the top of the listing, followed by everything else, while still honoring the Order Direction you select.

Order Direction

Once you have identified the field that will be used to order the entries, you can indicate what direction to display them -ascending or descending- or randomly.

Secondary Order Field (formerly "Order By")

Provides additional refinement to the sort order, such as order by lastName ascending, then postDate descending to display blog posts listed alphabetically by their creators, but for each last name, sort the posts from newest to oldest. This can be used in conjunction with featuredItem or featuredFaculty.

Make choices for how the visitor to your site interacts with the data displayed by the Channel Listing.

Paginate Results

Turn this on if you want to display a limited amount of entries on a page, but allow the user to page through to see more information.

Show Search Box

A search box allows users to enter terms to limit results.

Show Filters

This option enables display of dropdown menu filters for parent categories selected in Filters. Menu filters allow front-end users to filter data by categories.

Filters

You can select categories for the user to filter results. An events Channel Listing, for example, might have a Location category that includes subcategories of auditorium, theater, and online.

More Button URL

Especially in cases when you’ve limited your results, you might want to guide the user to more content from the channel. You can add a link to any entry page or enter custom link text to guide them to a page with specific filters pre-selected.

Additional controls for data display.

Limit

Limit how many entries are displayed. If no number is entered, the Channel Listing will display all the entries that fit your parameters.

Hide Past Events

Only applicable to events. Indicates whether to show or hide past events.

Developers can further refine what content displays. Enter a field name, operator, and value to impose conditions. SQL query language may also be used.

See how this was used on the Woskob Family Gallery page, where an offset of 1 is used to display all past events, but not the most recent event.