Top CMS Features: Datastores

Datastores can allow for flexibility for end users to style content. A datastore is a mini database of information maintained by site editors. Developers can filter and render data in just about any manner requested on the website. Where other content types require you to use custom fields to add new data to items, a developer can bake it into the definition of your own objects using datastores.

Benefits of the feature:

For Content Marketers & Editors: 

• Content editors can create and add content in one place and reference that content throughout the website in multiple places. For example, a banner slider could be contained in a datastore and that banner can be used on 8 different pages. 
• On certain page types, a developer could set up a datastore list for a content editor. What this allows an editor to do is create a collection of content and also control the order of the content. A team page with different types of departments can be easily segmented and populated to a page using a datastore. 

For Developers: 

• Datastores give a developer access to a JSON feed of data contained in the datastore. This allows a developer to define groups of custom fields for a content editor to easily input with unlimited entries (such as employee profiles) and allow developers to loop through collections of data to be rendered out on a website in different ways. 
• Datastores can be interdependent on each other in order to keep data consistent. For example, one datastore can contain all team members for a company and another datastore can contain all branch locations, and the team members can be associated directly with the branch in their profile. 
• Datastores can allow for flexibility for end users to style content. A developer can give a user different CSS settings and controls they can use to format their data as they input it. A banner could have text options of aligning left, right or center. 
• Datastores have endless opportunities for complex data to be rendered out in different ways. 

Examples of Datastores:

Property Datastore:
One example of using a datastore is for a commercial real estate company. Each property has  its own datastore entry. 

Each entry has the same custom fields that are filled out with content relevant to that specific property. On the live site, the properties are filtered by state, property coordinates, and type of pricing. The live site filters data using the attributes the content editor selected within their datastore entry:

After the property datastore entry is complete, the content editor needs to put the new property onto its location page. The location page has a custom datastore list that the editor will add the new property entry to. After publishing the location page, the added property will appear on the live site on the specified properties page with filterable attributes outlined by the datastore entry custom fields:

Once publishing the datastore entry, you will be able to see the property on the location landing page on the live site:

Team Datastore:
Does your team page need updating often? Do you have a large team page that needs to be updated annually? A team page that can be easily manipulated is the perfect collection of data for a datastore.

Each team member will have its own datastore entry. After adding all the team members you will then go to the Team Page that the datastore entries will appear on and add them to the page. It is a custom field list and it gives you the flexibility to drag and drop a team member within the datastore list to sort team members on the live site. 

Datastore Team Entries:

Team Page custom Field:

Define and reference objects the way you want. Datastores are designed to allow you to use Marketpath CMS far beyond the limitations of what we can define for you.

Learn more about Datastores