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Structures

A structure is a tree — nested items you rearrange in the Control Panel. That tree either owns a collection’s URLs or powers a freestyle nav. Same shape, two jobs.

Overview#

Statamic uses trees whenever order and nesting matter. A structure is the thing that holds that tree.

Every structure is a hierarchy of branches. What differs is what the hierarchy is for:

  1. Structured collections — the tree is the content hierarchy. Nesting and order drive URLs (and sibling order). Your sitemap lives on the collection.
  2. Navigations — the tree is a menu. Mix entry references, hard URLs, and text nodes. Position in the tree does not rewrite entry URLs.

Same drag-and-drop UI. Same YAML tree shape. Different jobs.

A Statamic structure tree A Statamic structure tree
Lovely little tree we have there.

When to use which#

Use a structured collection when:

  • Nesting should mean something in the URL (/about/team lives under /about)
  • An entry should appear only once in the hierarchy
  • Rearranging items should change where people land
  • You're building a classic pages area — home, about, children, the usual suspects

Use a navigation when:

  • You're building a header, footer, sidebar, or mega-menu
  • The same entry might show up more than once
  • You need section labels, external links, or anchor links mixed in
  • Menu order should be independent of URL structure

Use both when a pages collection owns the URLs and one or more navs compose what appears in chrome. That's normal — not overkill.

Structured collection Navigation
Owns URLs Yes — position drives routes No — entries keep their collection URLs
Entry once Yes No — can repeat
Freeform links / text Entry-link redirects (via collection settings) Yes — URLs and text nodes
Config lives in The collection itself content/navigation
Tree lives in content/trees/collections content/trees/navigation

Structured collections#

Turn on Orderable on a collection and Statamic wires up a structure under the hood.

  • You can only add entries from that collection
  • Order and nesting dictate URLs (via parent_uri and depth on the collection's route)
  • You can place an entry only once
  • You can create internal and external redirects (when enabled on the collection)
  • Max depth, root pages, mounting, and route patterns are collection concerns

Operational details — root page, constraining depth, redirects, mounting — live in Collections → Ordering.

A nav is a freestyle structure for menus and other chrome. It does not own content URLs.

  • Reference entries, hardcode URLs (internal or external), or use text-only nodes (section labels for dropdowns, etc.)
  • Choose which collections' entries appear in the picker
  • Referenced entries keep the URLs defined by their collection, regardless of position in the nav
  • The same entry can appear multiple times
  • Storage layout, blueprints, and localization are covered in Navigation

The tree#

The tree is the array that defines the hierarchy. Each item is a "page" branch.

tree:

  -