Introduction to Content Types
If your business publishes the same kind of thing over and over (completed projects, services you offer, the people on your team, homes for sale, dishes on your menu), Content Types are the feature built for exactly that. Instead of hand-building a brand-new page every single time, you set up the structure and the look once, then add as many entries as you like. Every one comes out polished and consistent, without you touching the design again.
This article explains the idea in plain terms so the rest of the Content Types guides make sense. Think of it as the map before the road trip.
What is a Content Type?
A Content Type is a blueprint for a kind of content you'll publish repeatedly. It answers two questions once, so you never have to answer them again:
- What information does each entry need? (For a project: a title, a location, a completion date, a set of photos, a description.)
- How should its pages look? (The page that lists them all, and the page for each individual one.)
Common examples of Content Types businesses set up:
- Projects: a design studio like Meridian Studio showing off finished client work
- Services: what you offer, each with its own detail page
- Team Members: the people at a consultancy like Halstead Consulting, with headshots and bios
- Case Studies: before-and-after success stories
- Properties: listings for a property group like Highgate Group, each with price, size, and a photo gallery
- Menu Items: dishes at a restaurant group like Larkspur Dining, each with a price and description
What is an Item?
An Item is one record of a Content Type, a single filled-in copy of the blueprint. If Projects is the Content Type, then "Vantage App Redesign" is one Item. If Team Members is the Content Type, then "Elena Rivera" is one Item.
The relationship is simple: one Content Type, many Items. You define "Projects" a single time, then add Item after Item after Item, each one automatically inheriting the same fields and the same page design.
The big idea
Here's the part that saves you the most time. On the Content Type, you do the setup work once:
- You decide what fields each entry fills in (its title, a price, a photo, and so on).
- You design the page that lists everything, and the page a single entry lives on.
After that, adding a new entry is just filling in a short form. The design takes care of itself. It's a lot like a form template paired with a page layout. You build the template once and fill it in over and over. Add your tenth project or your hundredth menu item, and it slots into the exact same clean layout as the first, no design work required.
The payoff: your website stays perfectly consistent, updates take minutes instead of hours, and you never have to remember "how did I lay out the last one?"
Where to find Content Types
Log in to your StoutStack admin (that's yoursite.com/admin, or your free web address at <yourname>.mystoutstack.com/admin if you haven't connected a custom domain yet). In the left-hand menu you'll see a Content group. Inside it are two entries that work as a pair:
- Content Types: where you create and shape your blueprints.
- Items: where all your individual entries live, across every Content Type you've made.
You'll spend a little time in Content Types up front, then most of your day-to-day work happens in Items as you add new entries.
What's included with your plan
How many Content Types you can create depends on your plan:
| Plan | Content Types | Items |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | 1 Content Type | Unlimited |
| Pro | Unlimited Content Types | Unlimited |
Items are never capped on any plan. Even on Starter, you can add as many projects, services, or listings as you want. You're simply limited to one kind of content until you upgrade. If you need a second Content Type (say, both "Projects" and "Team Members"), that's when Pro comes in. Existing content is never removed if you change plans; a downgrade only stops you from creating brand-new Content Types beyond your limit.
The workflow, start to finish
Setting up a Content Type follows the same five steps every time. Each step has its own detailed article in this guide:
- Create the Content Type: give it a name (like "Projects") and a web address.
- Choose its fields. Decide what information each Item will hold: a title, a price, photos, a description, and so on. See Choosing Fields for a Content Type.
- Design the listing page: the page that shows all your Items together, as a grid of cards or a list. See Designing the Listing (Archive) Page.
- Design the item page: the template every individual Item's page uses, including the "dynamic content" that fills itself in from each Item. See Designing the Item Page & Dynamic Content.
- Add your Items: the fun part, where you fill in the blueprint again and again. You can also feature your Items elsewhere on your site. See Adding Items & Featuring Them Across Your Site.
Don't feel you have to get everything perfect on the first pass. You can revisit the fields and the page designs at any time, and every existing Item picks up the changes automatically. Start simple, publish, and refine as you go.