Thank You!

Hi! I'm Luca, the creator of this template.

Firstly, thank you for buying this template! I really appreciate it!

Secondly, I wanted to let you know that you can always reach out to me at luca@dacorte.dev for any problem you may have related to this template or its customisation.

Thirdly, I'd love to see the end results with the template so feel free to share and ping me on Twitter: @LucaDaCorte - I'll be more than happy to repost it.

How The CMS Collections Work

Essentialism features two different CMS collections: Blog & Categories.

The "Blog" collection is the main one, and it contains all the articles with their relative information. Every article in the blog is also part of a category, therefore there are dedicated category pages with all the associated articles.

To link an article to its category, you'll have to write the exact category name while creating the CMS entry (and no, unfortunately it can't be done with a dropdown menu). For example, if you want to connect your latest article to the productivity category, you'll have to write "Productivity" in the category field.

On the main blog page (/blog), there are three articles for each category. The categories are dynamically taken from the "Categories" CMS collection, so you don't have to worry about manually editing the page. At the end of that short list, there's a link that brings the user directly to the collection page, where he can find all the articles related to that category.

Blog Collection

The blog collection is made up of seven different fields.

Let's quickly go over each one of them and see exactly what it does:

  • Title

    -> The title of the article. It's the title shown on the website, and it's also set as the page title of the article.

  • Slug

    -> The slug is the last part of the URL. If it is set to "article-name", the URL will be: www.domain.com/blog/article-name

  • Publishing Date

    -> When the article was published.

  • Category

    -> The exact name of the category.

  • Content

    -> The content of the article.

  • Social Image

    -> The image shown on social media when somebody shares the article. While you can use anything as the social image, I recommend you take a screenshot of the page and use that.

  • Meta Description

    -> A brief description of the article. It will be used on the article and as the meta description of the relative page.

Category Collection

The category collection is easier as it's only made up of five fields.

Let's quickly go over each one of them and see exactly what it does:

  • Name

    -> The name of the category. This is what you should reference from the Blog collection.

  • Slug

    -> The slug is the last part of the URL. If it is set to "category-name", the URL will be: www.domain.com/blog/category/category-name

  • Description

    -> Short description of what the category is about. This field will be shown in the category page just below the H1.

  • (Meta) Description

    -> This field will be set as the meta description for the category page.

  • Social Image

    -> The image that gets shown on social media when somebody shares the article. While you can use anything as the social image, I recommend you take a screenshot of the page and use that.

Meta Data

Every page has a unique title, meta description, and social image.

These data must be set manually for the static pages. To do that, go to Settings > Page Settings > Page You Want To Edit.

For CMS-generated pages, these data are pulled from the CMS fields, as explained in the sections above.

I really advise you to take some time to write custom meta data for each page. Here are some best practices you can follow:

  • Keep the title tag shorter than 60 characters.

  • Keep the meta description shorter than 160 characters.

  • Keep the slug user-friendly and readable.

  • Place your primary keyword in the title tag (SEO).

  • Place your primary keyword in the URL (SEO).

  • If possible, place the keyword at the start of the title tag rather than at the end (SEO).

  • Keep the title tag and H1 of the page equal (SEO).

Going Live

Once you've edited all the pages in the template and you're ready to go live, here's the steps you need to take:

  1. Delete this and any other unnecessary page.

  2. Delete all the explanations left on the pages.

  3. Upgrade to a PRO Plan - you can use the code "partner25proyearly" to get 3 months off on the annual subscription.

  4. Buy and connect a custom domain.

  5. Hit Publish.

And voilà! Your website is now live!