Guide 04 · Developer docs

Input types, layouts, components and images

The platform's central abstraction, in one line: an input type defines what an editor can enter, a layout area binds one input type to a named slot, a layout groups areas and points at a template, a record or component holds the content for each area, and the template reads it back. Read this book straight after the template languages.

L1–L3

Unit 03 of 09 4 pages

Layouts

Updated 23/10/2026 01:43

A layout joins a template file to a set of editable slots, and its controller field decides whether it is a page design or a reusable component. For whoever creates and retires layouts, and the developers whose templates they point at.

What a layout is, field by field goes through the layout form, the template path and how it fails, and custom fields on the layout. Page and component layouts is the centre of the unit: the controller field, which records see which layouts, and which of them render through their layout at all.

The last two pages are about living with layouts. Thumbnails, categories and the author's picker is the author's side of the library; Site scoping, identifiers and hiding covers several sites, addressing a layout from code, and retiring one without breaking anything. The areas of a layout have a unit of their own, next.

In this unit

Read in order

01 What a layout is, field by field A layout joins one template file to a set of layout areas and says which records may use it. Every field of the layout form and what it affects, the template path and how it fails, where the layout areas are defined, and custom fields on the layout itself. 02 Page and component layouts The controller field decides what a layout is for: set, it is a design that records of one kind can choose; empty, it is a component that authors place inside other content. Which records see which layouts, which of them use the layout's template, and how a component lists records. 03 Thumbnails, categories and the author's picker When an author adds a component, a layout's name and thumbnail are all they have to choose by. What the picker shows, what makes a useful thumbnail, what layout categories do and do not do, and how to keep a library of thirty or more components findable. 04 Site scoping, identifiers and hiding Three fields that matter once a site has history: which sites a layout belongs to, the identifier that lets code find it without an id, and hiding, the way to retire a layout without breaking the records that use it.