Add filters to Monocle Collections

Filters turn a long listing into useful choices. A visitor can select a topic, author, date range, or product requirement without knowing the exact words to search for.

Set the Collection's Content selection first. Filters work within that selection. They do not change which sources the Collection is allowed to show.

Choose the right kind of filter

Open Filters in the Collection editor.

The automatically generated Categories, Author, and Date filters require a Squarespace site.

Use Categories to keep the category structure we extracted from your site.
Use Author to offer captured author names.
Use Date for relative or custom date ranges.
Use a custom filter to combine source tags, categories, author names, or other indexed matching values into choices that make sense to visitors.
Use the product controls for price, stock, and sale status.

You do not need a custom filter just to repeat every native category. Use custom groups when the visitor's question differs from the site's original metadata.

The Show and Hide choice controls whether visitors see the filters. Hiding them keeps the saved definitions. Filter visibility, placement, and unavailable-option settings need the Design editor feature. The editor shows any plan requirement; see current pricing.

Automatic filters from tag prefixes

Tags can create filters for you. For example, tag your content with Medium: Charcoal and Medium: Aquarelle. Once Monocle indexes those tags, a Medium filter becomes available with Charcoal and Aquarelle as its options.

To show it in a Collection, open Filters in that Collection's editor and turn on the Medium switch. Discovery does not enable it automatically.

The text before the colon names the filter; the text after it names the option. Automatic discovery needs at least two different values with the same prefix. As Monocle indexes new matching tags, the options update automatically.

You do not need AI suggestions or a separate matching rule for each option. Use a custom filter instead when you want to combine tags, categories, or authors that do not share a prefix.

Start with AI suggestions

Suggest several filters

Select the content that belongs in the Collection.
Open Filters.
Select Suggest filters.
Review each proposed filter name, option, and matching rule.
Select Apply suggestions only when the groups fit the content and the visitor's task.

Suggestions use the indexed metadata within the current content selection. They are drafts, not an automatic change to the published listing. They cannot invent useful source metadata that is missing from the index.

For example, an article archive with tags for fieldwork, teaching, and policy could offer a simpler Purpose filter. Review whether each option really groups the intended articles. Do not accept an impressive label that matches the wrong material.

Prefill one filter

Select Create new filter, or edit an existing custom filter.
Enter a Filter name.
Open AI assist.
Use Describe the options to explain the grouping, such as “Group these articles by the task a reader wants to complete”.
Select Generate.
Review and edit the resulting names and values.
Select Create for a new filter, or Save for an existing one.

AI assist fills the filter draft. It does not publish the draft for you. Cancel leaves the saved definition unchanged.

Suggestions need at least two indexed items with distinguishing tags, categories, or matching values in the selected content. If there is not enough evidence, add useful metadata in the source, crawl or synchronise the site again, and retry. Check the content selection before broadening it just to obtain suggestions.

Build a meaningful custom group manually

Suppose the source articles have tags fieldwork, data-tools, lesson-plan, and workshop. Visitors may find a Use it for filter clearer than a list of all four tags.

Option name	Matching tags / values	Meaning
Research	`fieldwork`, `data-tools`	Match either kind of research material.
Teaching	`lesson-plan`, `workshop`	Match either kind of teaching material.

These are example values. Select the real values offered by your site's catalogue.

Select Create new filter.
Enter Use it for in Filter name.
Enter Research in Option name.
Add the two corresponding values under Matching tags / values.
Add the Teaching row and its values.
Check Matches for each row.
Select Create.
Enable the filter in this Collection and put it in the required order.

A row matches an item when any of its values match. The number counts distinct items in the current Collection, not the number of tags. An item with both research tags counts once.

An option can also combine an author name with a tag or category value. This is useful for an editorial grouping such as Recommended starting points. It does not change the item's author or category in the source.

Wildcard values such as topic-* can group a consistent family of values. Check the matching counts and actual results before using a broad pattern. Choosing a catalogue suggestion treats literal stars and backslashes as part of that value.

Internal name is optional. Use it to distinguish reusable variants in the admin interface without changing the visitor-facing filter name.

Use the premade controls

Author

Author uses captured author names. It has no separately editable option definition. If an author is missing, check the source byline and let Monocle crawl or synchronise the change.

When the Author filter is enabled, author names on eligible article cards can act as filter buttons. Product cards do not offer an Author field.

Date

Date offers All time, Last 24 hours, Past week, Past month, Past year, and Custom.

Relative ranges exclude undated and future items. Past week means the previous seven days. Month and year ranges use calendar subtraction. Custom needs both dates and includes both complete UTC days. An incomplete pair of dates is not yet an active filter. All time includes undated content.

The filter uses the indexed content date, not the date when you embedded the Collection.

Enable the required price, stock, and sale controls for a product listing. Visitors see them together under Product filters. Clearing this group resets those product choices without clearing unrelated filters.

The available products still depend on Advanced Product Search access. Price sorting is a separate setting under Sort, and is available when Products is the only enabled content source.

Understand combinations and counts

Within one filter, selected options use OR. Between different filters, selections use AND.

For example, Use it for: Research or Teaching combined with Author: Amina shows items that match either purpose and the selected author. The text query narrows these results further.

Visitor counts include the current query and the other filters, but exclude the selections in the option's own group. They help a visitor see alternatives. They do not count only the cards on the current page.

Under Unavailable options:

Hide removes unavailable, unselected choices.
Show keeps unavailable choices visible but disabled.

Selected zero-match choices remain removable. A missing count is not a promise of zero matches.

Reuse and maintain filters

Custom definitions are reusable across Collections. Editing a shared definition affects every Collection that uses it. Review those uses before renaming options or changing values. Deleting a reusable filter removes its references from the affected Collections after confirmation.

Enable and order filters separately for each Collection. On plans with Design editor access, use Placement to put them at the top, left, or right. Check narrow screens because controls can move into a compact filter panel.

Before publishing, try one option, several options in the same group, and a combination across groups. Include an empty result and clear the selections again. A small set of useful choices is usually easier to navigate than a copy of every tag on the site.

Continue with Design or Customising Collections.