Using multiple blogs with and without dates for posts

Hi - We are creating a portfolio of our resellers and I thought the Portfolio page type was the solution. But, Portfolios cannot be searched i.e if you add a search bar it will only search across the entire site or in events and blogs.  We want users to be able to search for resellers on the portfolio page.  

Support has suggested using the Blog structure instead which seems to work apart from the fact that if we remove the dates from each reseller 'post' (i.e their sub page) it also removes the date from other actual Blog section.  This is because they share the same structure and the site sees it as all one blog despite appearing in different places with different menu items.

Support cannot find a way around this and suggested custom code might be available.

Anyone else using the blog structure in multiple places and found a way to remove dates from one and not the other?

Thanks.

Hi @AmandaCB29

Portfolio Pages are a fairly new addition to Squarespace (in 7.1) and so haven't been fully incorporated into the Squarespace ecosystem yet. They aren't very scalable (maximum of 60 sub-pages) and aren't very flexible because they don't have full "collection" status yet. This means they cannot be connected to Summary Blocks, Search Blocks, and so on.

Before Portfolio Pages came along, the workaround was to use Blog Pages to present portfolios and projects. They're more flexible and far more scalable - and they have full "collection" status. The downside is that, as you've found, you'll need to know a little styling code ("custom CSS") to tweak them to look like pages and not blog posts.

Regarding how to format a blog page without affecting your actual blog page/posts, I've posted on this forum (as have many others!) many times about using blog posts for this purpose ("Frankenblogs" 🤣 as @usingmyhead once described them to me) so you may find posts describing this. That said, they don't always "jump out" when you search for them! If you'd like specific help with this, please post back with a link to your Frankenblog page, and details of what you want to change. We (forum users) can then provide you with more specific advice 🙂.

Regarding search, the built in search feature is somewhat outdated and unreliable, but I'll let you test this for yourself. You may be lucky. If it doesn't work for you then I do recommend using a third party addon called Universal Filter (written by another Circle member). It's a paid plugin but it will allow the collection to be searched and filtered, making it easier for users to use a directory. I use it all the time for "Frankenblogs" and directories.

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Thanks so much, @Paul2009, for your response. I did do a half hearted search in the forums but when you don't really know what you're searching for, I missed using the term 'Frankenblogs' 😆... I'll give it another try but suspect I will be posting back with our page link!  

So a year later and portfolio items still don't support filters, tags drafts and summary blocks? how hard can it be Squarespace?