Content Widgets

General Concepts

Sitefinity has two types of display for each dynamic content widget: list and detail.

List views are meant to usually display more than one item, and will be what shows by default when you drop a widget onto a page.

Detail views are meant to show the details of one item, usually meant to be the link that someone would use if they were looking at only that specific item.

Displaying a List of Items

This is the most common technique using widgets: showing a carousel, vertical list, or other type of list of any dynamic content type.

• In the Content tab:
  • Select which items you want to display. Frequently you will just want all items, if so, you can leave everything here as the default.
  • If you want only a subset of all of the items of the type you're using a widget for to show, either use "selected [x]" to choose explicitly, or use "Filtered" to select taxonomies to filter by.
• In the List settings tab:
  • Select one of the three options for how many items to show:
    • Use paging - This will show the first X items, but show pagination below the list. You usually don't want this unless it's right at the top of the page, and showing a list of this content is the focus of the page. You never want this option if the template is a carousel.
    • Use limit - Show X items and no more. If you're not sure which you want, this is very specific. If you put 6 in the box, it will only ever show 6 items.
    • No limit and paging - Show all of the items that match the criteria in the Content tab. Never select this if you are showing all of the items of a content type with more than 50 items. This is the best option if you are selecting items manually in the Content tab.
  • Under sort [x], select one of the options, most of which are self-explanatory. "As set manually" only works when you are selecting items manually on the Content tab.
  • Under List Template, select a template based on how you want the items to display. Many of these will be demonstrated later on this page.
• In the Single item settings tab:
  • Some types of content don't link to anything, and if they don't, you won't need to change anything on this tab.
  • If it does link to anything, you will want to set "Open single item in..." to a page that has been configured with the "Display a single item" settings below. You don't need to select a detail template, because that will be determined by the destination page.

Displaying a single item

You will typically do this when creating a page that you will link to in the single item settings in the List display view. You won't have to create these often because you usually want to link all items of one type to the same place.

You never want to do this unless the single item is the focus of the page. If you want to show a single item within the context of a page with other information on it, see the below section.

• In the Content tab: You don't need to do anything here. This is all for displaying lists.
• In the List settings tab: This mostly doesn't matter, as we will only be linking to this page with the detail view. You will see this list when you look at the page in edit mode, so it can be useful to pick these settings just to make that faster:
  • Under list settings, choose "Use limit" and set the number to 1.
  • Leave the "List template" as the default, or pick one that is simple.
• In the Single item settings tab:
  • Make sure "Open single item in..." stays on "Auto-generated page"
  • Choose the template you want under "Detail template".

Displaying a Single Item Using List Templates

You will need to do this for some content types, because we're not making the single item the focus of the page, but we still want to show one specific item.

Configure the List template exactly as you would in the first section about configuring List templates. You'll need to do one of the following:

• Select "selected [x]..." under Content
• Select anything under Content, and under List settings select "Use limit" and set the number to 1.

Then, click "Advanced" in the bottom right. Click "Model" in the window that opens. In the field at the top labelled "ContentViewDisplayMode", put the word Master replacing anything that's currently there. This will force the widget into the List view.

The reason you need to do this is because if you select a single item then Sitefinity will use the Detail view, which overrides the page title and SEO info with the values from that single item.