Blog Posts Collection

Overview

Blog posts are the most common CMS collection and the one most likely to drive organic traffic. Getting the structure right means better SEO, easier content management, and a consistent reading experience.

Recommended fields

Required

• Title (text) — the primary field. Keep under 60 characters for SEO.
• Slug (slug) — auto-generated from title, used in URLs.
• Body (rich text) — the article content.

Recommended

• Excerpt (text) — 1-2 sentence summary for cards and meta descriptions. 150-160 characters ideal.
• Featured image (image) — used for cards, social sharing, and hero sections.
• Date (date) — publication date. Always use a date field, not text.
• Category (select) — primary content category.
• Tags (multi-select) — secondary classification for filtering.

Optional but valuable

• Author (reference) — link to Team Members or Authors collection. Essential if you have multiple writers.
• Read time (number) — estimated reading time in minutes.
• SEO title (text) — override the title for search results. Max 60 characters.
• Meta description (text) — override the excerpt for search snippets. 150-160 characters.
• Social image (image) — override the featured image for social sharing (different aspect ratio).
• Series (select) — group related posts into a series.

Author relationship

If you have multiple blog authors, you have two options:

Option A: Reference to Team Members

Best when authors are also team members. The blog post references the Team Members collection, pulling in name, photo, and bio.

Option B: Separate Authors collection

Best when you have guest authors who are not team members, or when authors need different fields (author bio vs. team bio, social links vs. company info).

Either way, use a single reference field — each post has one primary author. If you need multiple authors, use multi-reference, but this is uncommon.

Categories vs. tags

• Category (select) — one per post. Defines the primary type: "Engineering", "Product", "Company". Used for navigation and URL structure.
• Tags (multi-select) — multiple per post. More granular: "React", "Performance", "Case Study". Used for filtering and related posts.

Use categories for top-level navigation. Use tags for cross-cutting topics. Do not make both required — tags should be optional.

SEO fields

Add these from the start, even if you do not use them immediately:

• SEO title — for when the display title and search title should differ.
• Meta description — for controlling the snippet in search results.
• Social image — for controlling the preview card on Twitter/LinkedIn.

These fields should be optional and page-only (not needed for card displays).

Tips

1. Excerpt is not optional in practice — without it, cards either show no description or pull the first 150 characters of the body (which reads poorly).
2. Date field, not datetime — unless you publish multiple posts per day, a date is sufficient. Datetime adds unnecessary complexity.
3. Slug must be unique — enforce uniqueness. Duplicate slugs break routing.
4. Featured image aspect ratio — establish a standard aspect ratio (16:9, 3:2) and communicate it to content editors.