What a collection is

A collection is a page of your storefront, at a URL of its own, that presents a list of listings or users. Conditions choose them, and the list follows your catalog: a listing that meets the conditions shows up in it by itself. The collection also has its own texts, image and search engine settings, like a page.

The Use on the storefront toggle, at the top of its form, sets what it is for:

  • on, the collection is a page of the storefront, marked Storefront page in the list, and it is Online or Offline;
  • off, the collection groups listings without a page: it is never shown nor indexed, and the list marks it Data only.

This article covers collections that have a page.

Create a collection

  1. In the menu, under Configuration, click Settings, then Collections, in the Sales & catalog group.
  2. Click New collection.
  3. Fill in the form, card by card: each is described below.
  4. Click Save, in the “Unsaved changes” bar that appears at the bottom of the screen with the first change.

The collection is created offline. Once it is saved, the View the page link, at the top of the form, opens its page: you see it before your visitors do.

Name and page title

In the Collection details card:

  • Name: the collection’s name in the admin panel.
  • Page title: the title the page displays. Left empty, the page displays the name. For a new collection, the URL fills in from this title, or from the name while the title is empty, until you edit the URL yourself.
  • Subtitle and Description: the texts of the page. The description takes formatting, links and images.

Conditions

The Conditions card chooses what the collection presents.

  1. Next to This collection presents, choose Listings or Users. The conditions offered follow that choice.
  2. Next to Include the listings matching, choose all conditions (each must be met) or any condition (one is enough).
  3. Click Add a condition, choose what it tests (a category, an attribute, a price, a city…), then the operator (is, is not, is greater than…) and the value.
  4. To leave listings out, click Add an exclusion: a listing matching any exclusion is removed, whatever the inclusion conditions say.

At the top right of the card, the number of matching listings updates with every change.

In this example, with all conditions, the collection presents the listings of the Garden category under $50, except those tagged clearance. With any condition, it would present every garden listing and every listing under $50, still without the clearance tag.

A condition on a category includes its subcategories. On an attribute, the values offered are the attribute’s own.

Listings added by hand. A collection can also receive listings picked one by one, through the Admin API. They stay in the collection whatever the conditions say, and the form’s Listings card gives their number.

The URL

The Slug field, in the Search engine optimizations card, takes the page’s slug, the end of its URL: garden-deals gives https://your-marketplace.com/garden-deals, at the root of your storefront.

Pages and collections share these URLs, and a URL already held is refused. A message under the field says so:

  • as you type, “A page already uses this URL. Delete the page first, or choose another URL.”, with a link to the page;
  • as you type, “This URL is reserved by the marketplace. Choose another one.”: a URL the marketplace already uses, such as the sign-in page’s;
  • on saving, “Another collection already uses this URL.”

Likewise, a page cannot take a collection’s URL.

Changing the URL of an existing collection opens the Change the URL? confirmation dialog, with the current URL, the date it has been in place since, and the new one. Click Change the URL: the old URL redirects to the new one, and existing links keep working.

Search engines and sitemap

In the Search engine optimizations card:

  • SEO title and Meta description: the title and text search engines display. The Insert variable button adds the collection name, the site title, a separator or a description excerpt: the text then follows the collection as you edit it. A new collection starts with these variables. The Google preview shows the result.
  • Meta keywords and Canonical URL, as for a page.
  • No index and No follow: ticked, they ask search engines not to index the page, or not to follow its links.

When the Sitemap app is on, the Sitemap card sets how often the page changes and its priority in the sitemap. Only online collections are listed there.

Template, thumbnail and image

In the right-hand column:

  • Visibility: Online or Offline.
  • Templates: Page chooses the page template, Thumbnail the card that presents each listing or user. Both are files of your theme (see below);
  • Featured Image: the page’s image, with its alternative text.

How the page looks depends on your theme: where the title and the image go, how many cards per row.

The theme files

The template and the thumbnail live in the theme editor: in the menu, under Content, click Theme, then Theme editor.

  • Page template: collection.liquid, in the Templates list. It is the collection choice of the Page list, the one every collection uses by default: editing it changes the page of each of them.
  • Thumbnails: listing-thumbnail.liquid for listings and user-thumbnail.liquid for users, in the Snippets list. They are the Default cards of the Thumbnail list. listing-thumbnail.liquid also serves the storefront’s other lists of listings, such as search.

A page or a card for some collections only

To give a collection a page of its own, without touching the others:

  1. In the theme editor, click next to Templates.
  2. In the dialog, choose collection after “Create a new template for”, enter a name after “called”, for instance deals, then click Create template.
  3. The file collection.deals.liquid is created from collection.liquid: edit it, then save.
  4. On the collection’s form, choose deals in Page, then save.

To give it a card of its own:

  1. In the theme editor, click next to Snippets, enter a name, for instance deal-card, then click Create snippet.
  2. The snippet is created empty: write the card, for instance from the content of listing-thumbnail.liquid. It receives the same variables, listing for a listing, user for a user.
  3. On the collection’s form, choose deal-card in Thumbnail, then save.

A snippet removed from the editor leaves the collection on the default card. The variables available are described on the developer hub.

The list of collections

The Collections screen lists the collections with their Name, Page title, Slug (the end of their URL), Use, Visibility and number of Items. The filters at the top search by name, URL, use or visibility.

The name and the page title can be edited in place:

  • Name: hover over the row, then click the pencil next to the name. The name itself opens the form.
  • Page title: click the title. A dash stands for an empty title: the page then displays the name.

Type the text, then press Enter or click ; Escape or cancels.

Collection models, when there are any, come first in the list: see Create collections from a model.

Delete a collection

  1. At the bottom of the form, click Delete collection.
  2. In the confirmation dialog, enter, if you want one, a URL of your marketplace in Redirect to (optional), such as /deals or / for the home page.
  3. Click the dialog’s Delete collection button.

With a redirect, the collection’s URL leads to the chosen page. Without one, it returns a 404 error, which search engines read as a page that is gone.

What your users see

The collection’s page presents its title, subtitle, description, image and the cards of its listings or users, page by page. Everyone can see it while it is online.

To lead your visitors there, add a link to its URL in a menu (see Manage navigation menus) or in a page.

Edge cases and limits

  • Number of conditions: a collection holds at most 60 conditions, exclusions included.
  • Collection of users: its conditions test the user group, the city, the country, the department and the distance from a place.
  • Department: offered on French marketplaces.
  • Distance from a place (“within N km of”): offered when the Google map app is on. It only finds listings, or users, that have a location: geolocation must be on for what the collection presents.
  • Collection made by a model: its conditions are the model’s, and it can be deleted once detached. See Create collections from a model.
  • API and AI agents: collections can also be created and edited through the Admin API and by an AI agent (see Connect an AI agent to your marketplace with MCP).