Building pages, sections, and posts

This article is about structure: the pages your site is made of, the sections you stack onto a page, the content blocks inside your story, and the posts you publish to your blog. Records-backed parts (your animals, groups, and records) pull live from what you already have on Creatures, so building a page is mostly arranging and writing, not re-entering data.

Pages and page types

Your site has a home page plus any number of additional pages. There are three page types:

• Story: the long-form "about" or "our program" page, written as a freeform body of content blocks. There is exactly one story page per site (it is a singleton). This is where you tell your program's story in your own words.
• Custom: extra pages you add, such as "Available", "Sires and dams", or "Our process". A custom page is built from sections and lives at /p/{slug}. Add as many as you need.
• Contact: a contact page type for how to reach you.

Starting a custom page from a template

When you add a custom page, you can start it from a template so it is not blank:

• available_animals: a hero plus your for-sale animals. Good for an "Available" page.
• sires_dams: a hero plus sire and dam showcases. Good for showing your breeding animals.
• group: a hero plus one featured group or litter. Good for a single litter or clutch page.
• about: a hero plus a writing block. Good for a secondary "about" style page.
• blank: an empty page you build up yourself.
• contact: a contact page.

Per-page fields, and what each one means

Every page has the same set of fields:

• Title: the page's name, shown in navigation and at the top of the page.
• Slug: the page's web address piece, auto-made from the title, lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens, and unique on your site. For a custom page the public URL is /p/{slug}, so the slug is literally the page's address. You can edit it; changing it changes the page's link.
• Status: one of draft (a work in progress, not public), published (public), or archived (retired). Only published pages appear on your live site, so a page you are still building stays out of sight until you set it to published.
• Visibility: one of public (anyone), creatures_only (only signed-in Creatures members), or private (only you, for staging). On your public subdomain, only public pages show. (Visibility is covered in depth in Choosing what the public sees.)
• Sort order: the order pages sit in. You can reorder pages, which drives how they line up.

Remember the story page is a singleton: there is one, and you cannot add a second story page.

Sections (the building blocks of a page)

Pages other than the story page are composed of sections stacked in an order you control. Each section renders a styled band on the page. The built section types are:

• hero (the top banner), about (a story or standards block), animals (a grid of your animals), group (a litter or group card), pedigree, health, gallery, services, process, support, contact, trust_rail (a strip of trust signals), testimonials, sire_showcase, dam_showcase, and content (freeform blocks).

You add, reorder, and remove sections to shape a page. Three of them are singletons, meaning one each per page: hero, trust_rail, and contact.

Section settings, with their values

Some sections have settings that change what they pull or show:

• animals: a focus of all, for_sale, or featured (which animals to pull), and a count from 1 to 24 (default 4). The implication: point an animals section at your for-sale animals on an "Available" page, or at featured animals on a homepage.
• group: a count from 1 to 12 (default 1), for how many groups or litters to show.
• gallery: a count from 1 to 24 (default 8), for how many images to show.
• testimonials: a heading (up to 60 characters) and a count from 3 to 9 (default 6).
• sire_showcase and dam_showcase: a heading, a kicker (an eyebrow line, default "Breeding program"), and a count from 1 to 12 (default 8).

Most sections also expose editable inline text: a kicker line, a headline, and body copy you can rewrite in place. If you leave them, they default to sensible, layout-appropriate wording.

Records-backed sections pull live

The sections that draw on your data (animals, group, pedigree, health, sires and dams) pull live from your existing animals, groups, and records. If you do not have the relevant data yet, the builder shows a small "no animals yet" prompt in that section instead of an empty band, so the page never looks broken.

Content blocks (inside the story body and content sections)

The story page body, and any content section, are built from blocks. The block types are:

• Heading: a section heading at level 2, 3, or 4, up to 180 characters. Use levels to structure a long page.
• Text: a paragraph, up to 12,000 characters, with optional bold, italic, and links. This is the workhorse for writing.
• Image: one image with an optional caption.
• Gallery: several images with a caption.
• Video embed: a video by its URL.

Treat the character limits as practical room rather than targets. They are generous, so write naturally and break long pages up with headings.

Posts (your blog)

You can publish posts that appear on your public site at /blog and /blog/{slug}. You create one from the Post button in the builder. Each post has:

• a title and a slug (its /blog/{slug} address),
• an excerpt (the short summary in the blog list),
• tags, a hero image, and a body of the same blocks above,
• a status (draft, published, or archived) and a visibility (public, creatures_only, or private).

Be clear on what this is: a lightweight way to share updates and news, not a full blog content-management system. There is no separate posts dashboard with scheduling. You write a post and publish it, and it shows on your /blog page. If you list animals for sale and want a post or page to surface them, an animals or listings section is the better tool; for how listings get onto the site at all, see Choosing what the public sees, and for selling itself, Listing an animal at a fixed price.

Content edits stage as a draft

Like design, content changes stage into your draft. Adding a page, reordering sections, or editing a block does not change the public site until you Publish changes. The "Unpublished changes" pill tells you a draft is waiting. The full publishing loop is in Adding photos, then publishing and updating your site.

Related information

• Your Creatures website: what it is and how to open the builder
• Designing your website: layouts, colors, and the AI restyle
• Choosing what the public sees: animals, listings, the menu, and visibility
• Adding photos, then publishing and updating your site

Updated on: 23/06/2026