Can I use CMS collection without collection page?

I want to use a CMS collection to maintain data that will be used by different collection lists. Right now, I see that the collection page is automatically generated for all collections.

Is there a way to delete a collection page or hide it in a different way than password protection or redirect by using Javascript?

1 Like

What’s the result you want from hiding the page @tomasz.jankowski? People stumbling upon the page through search?

I just don’t need collection pages for all of the collections. I have couple collections that are used only in collection list, for example to display 3 people from team responsible for the project.

What I would like to have

  • 404 or 301 HTTP code for such pages
  • Hide from search engine indexing

I just don’t want to design/develop pages that I don’t need.

okay, cool. I wanted to clarify why you wanted this so I could give you the best response :slight_smile: . Hide from search engines is simply inserting
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
in the head section of the cms collection page. Other than that, you can also exclude the page from website search results in the page settings.
This way no-one would stumble upon these pages and no design is needed :slight_smile:

Ok, but to be clear there is no way for collection pages to return 404 HTTP code. Even if they will be excluded from search engines, the page will still be there.

@tomasz.jankowski I just tried this with some demo content and it seems as long as you don’t create a page for the collection IE. Fastest Web Hosting Services | Buy High Quality Hosting, that will return a 404. Any page Fastest Web Hosting Services | Buy High Quality Hosting will display an empty page.

Yes, that’s the current situation and it’s fine. I will just hide block empty pages with password at the moment.

For the future I would love to have an option to select if I want those empty pages or not.
Thank you for help.

3 Likes

Plus one on this. It would be nice to store content in a collection but not have pages for each item.

For example, when writing content for a public page, I frequently use a database to lookup common blurbs and links about equipment. I don’t need a page for each equipment item; I just need to store information that I frequently reference for public content. That way, when I update the item in the database, every reference to that item will also update.

6 Likes

Hello! Is it possible to do this for particular items in the collection? In some cases we are using collection items for one purpose (filtering) but do not want individual pages for them but in other cases some of the items in the collection we do want pages for. I assume using the would apply to whole collection. Any modification to that that would let us apply this to certain items?

Thanks,
Justin

2 Likes

I thought the same thing - if I want a Collection for reviews that are listed on the website, I don’t need an actual page for each review, just to use them in a footer or something.

4 Likes

I think the best thing to do is to add a <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> and then provide a 301 redirection to all pages in the folder using this rule - . /oldfolder/(.*)

This way, each time you create a new CMS page within that collection it will automatically be redirected using the rule above.