The catalogue

Start hereCatalogueThe catalogueA catalogue is a list of similar things that all carry the same details: plants, products, stockists, events, case studies, blog posts. You describe the details once, add the items, then show them on any page.Making a catalogue and choosing its propertiesGo to Catalogue in the admin menu. The dropdown beside the Catalogue heading picks which catalogue you are working on, and you can have as many as you like. Under it, Items holds the entries and Structure holds the catalogue's design.

Click New catalogue, type a name ("Plants", say) and click Create.

You land on Structure, on the Properties tab. Properties are the details every item carries, such as height, colour or price range.

Click Add property and pick a type. Repeat for each detail.

Click a property to open it: set its Label, and tick Required if every item must have it.

Click Save on the bar at the bottom of the screen.

The types are Text, Text area, Rich text (with bold, links and lists), Number, Yes / No, Dropdown, Multi-select, URL and Date. A Dropdown or Multi-select has Options: the choices to pick from.

Unit: shown after a number, such as cm.

Section: groups properties under a heading, both when you edit an item and on its page. Type the same section name on several properties to keep them together.

Use as a filter: lets visitors narrow the list by this property. Filters appear for Dropdown, Multi-select and Yes / No properties.

Disabled (hide everywhere): hides a property without deleting what is stored in it.

Every property you add can be shown on your public site. Do not keep private notes in a property.Drag the handle on the left of a property to change its order.The catalogue's settingsStructure → Settings holds the choices that apply to the whole catalogue:

Item noun: what one entry is called, such as "Product" or "Article".

Items per page: how many the Catalogue block lists at a time.

Picture shape: the frame every picture sits in: Square, Landscape, Portrait or The picture's own shape. Set it before framing any pictures.

Each item has a page of its own: on for things people search for by name (a plant, a product). Off for entries that only make sense together, like testimonials; they still show in lists but have no page for Google.

Items live at the top of the site: see *Item pages and their addresses* below.

Items end on: appears once you have a Date property. For events: the day after that date the item is marked finished. It keeps its page, saying the event has finished, and moves to the end of lists with a Finished badge.

If your site has a shop, Items in this catalogue are for sale turns the catalogue into your products. See Setting up the shop. The ⋯ menu at the top right has Duplicate and Delete catalogue…; deleting asks you to type the catalogue's name, and removes all its items and categories for good.CategoriesCategories sort items into groups, and groups can hold smaller groups: Rhododendrons, then Species and Hybrids under it. Set them up on Structure → Categories.

Add category adds one at the top level. Hover over a category and click its + (Add sub-category) to add one inside it.

Click a category's name to rename it.

Drag a row up or down to reorder, and sideways to nest it under the one above or bring it back out.

The funnel icon (Filters shown here) picks which filters visitors see while browsing that category.

Deleting a category removes it and its sub-categories. The items stay; they just lose that category.

Put an item into categories by ticking them in the Categories box on the right of the item.Adding and editing items

Go to Catalogue → Items and click New item.

Type the item's name at the top, where it says Untitled item.

Fill in the details. Long text (Rich text and Text area properties) has its own box at the top; everything else is under Properties.

Under Images, click Add image to choose pictures from the media library.

Tick its Categories on the right.

Change Draft to Published when it is ready, then click Save on the bar at the bottom.

In Images, the first picture is the Cover, used on tiles and when the item is shared. Drag pictures to reorder them, or click a picture's star to make it the cover. Click the arrow at the end of a picture's row to write its Alt text (a description for screen readers and Google) and a Caption. The crop button sets how it is framed and which part stays in view.SEO sets the Meta title, Meta description and Social image used by Google and when someone shares the item. Left blank, the item's name and cover picture are used. See Search engines and sharing.Back on Items, search by name, filter by status or tick categories under Refine. Tick several items to Publish, Unpublish or Delete them in one go. Deleting an item cannot be undone; to take it off the site for now, set it to Draft.Importing and exporting a spreadsheetOn Items, Export downloads the catalogue as a CSV file you can open in Excel or Google Sheets: one row per item, with its name, address name (slug), status, categories, a column per property and its pictures.Import reads a CSV file back in. Each row is matched to an item by its slug: a matching item is updated, and a new slug adds a new item. Categories are matched by their slugs too.The easiest way to get the columns right is to Export first, edit that file and Import it again.Showing a catalogue on a pageIn the page editor, add one of the catalogue blocks and pick your catalogue in its Catalogue setting:

Catalogue: a browsing view for a long list, with a search box, a filter panel built from your Use as a filter properties, and the chosen item's details opening beside the list.

Catalogue grid: a wall of tiles. Tile style chooses Picture and name, Picture, name and details or Text only (no pictures), and Visitor toolbar can add a Search box, Sort menu, filters and Category buttons. Show this many, then a button keeps a long wall short.

Latest posts: the newest few items as teasers, for a blog strip on the home page. See below.

To show only part of a catalogue, pick a category in Show only a category (optional). The page then shows that category and everything inside it.A catalogue also makes a good blog or news section: a catalogue called Posts, with a Date property, a Rich text property for the article and a Text area for a short summary. Then:

Put a Catalogue grid on your Blog page with Item page layout set to Article — one reading column, so each post opens as a readable article.

Add Latest posts to the home page. It shows the newest published posts, ordered by the catalogue's date. Posts sets how many (0 shows them all) and Posts per page adds page numbers under a long list.

Show as picks Cards — photo, date, excerpt, or plain titles: a list of links.

Catalogue grid and Latest posts are optional blocks. If they are not in your block list, ask whoever set up your site to turn them on.Item pages and their addressesEvery published item gets a page of its own. Its address is the page the catalogue is shown on, then the item's name: an item called Snowy Owl on your /birds page lives at /birds/snowy-owl. Before the catalogue is on any page, items live at /catalogue/ followed by the catalogue and the item. Drafts have no public page.With Items live at the top of the site ticked, the address is just the item's name, such as /snowy-owl. This keeps the addresses of a blog moved from another site. If one of your pages already has that address, the page keeps it and the item keeps the longer one; the item's editor tells you when this happens.Catalogue grid has Item page layout: Picture beside the details for a product or a stockist, or Article — one reading column for a blog post or case study.An item's address comes from its name. Renaming an item gives it a new address, and links to the old one stop working. If people link to it, add a redirect from the old address.← LeadsSetting up the shop →Getting startedPagesBuilding with blocksNavigation and lookMediaForms and leadsCatalogueShopBookings and membersRunning the siteCairnWebsites for businesses that need more than a brochure. Built, hosted and kept running by us.StartBuildRun© 2026 Cairn. All rights reserved.Built with Cairn.