Conditions and rules
How conditions work in an automated smart collection — fields, operators, and date logic
A condition is a single rule a record must satisfy to be included in a smart collection. Each condition has three parts: a field, an operator, and a value.
A smart collection can combine many conditions. Choose Match all to require every condition to be true, or Match any for at least one.
What fields you can match on
The fields available depend on the target content type. Common patterns include:
- Direct attributes — title, slug, status, publish date.
- Programming context — for events: season, series, venue, start date, end date, type.
- Relationships — the people, works, or organizations attached to a record.
- Custom attributes — any custom data fields you've added to the content type. See Custom data.
- Categories and tags — for posts.
- Organization type — for organizations: producer, sponsor, and similar roles.
Each target content type exposes the fields that are meaningful for it. Events get date and venue fields; posts get categories and tags; people get role-based fields.
What operators you can use
Operators express the kind of comparison:
- is — exact match.
- is not — exact non-match.
- more than / fewer than — for numeric and date fields.
- is in — match against a list of values.
Not every operator is meaningful for every field — date operators don't make sense on a tag, and "is in" is for fields that take a set of values. The condition editor only shows the operators that apply to the field you've picked.
Working with dates
Date conditions support two modes:
- Specific date/time — match against a fixed moment ("after 1 January 2026").
- Relative to now — match against a moving target ("in the next 7 days", "more than 30 days ago").
Relative date conditions are how you build listings that stay current. "Upcoming events" is a smart collection of events with a start date more than now; "Recent posts" is a smart collection of posts with a publish date less than 30 days ago.
You can pick a preset (now, now + 7 days, now − 30 days) or a custom offset in minutes, hours, days, or weeks.
Building useful conditions
A few patterns that come up often:
- Upcoming events — events where start date is after now.
- This season's events — events where season is the current season.
- Recent posts — posts where publish date is after now − 30 days.
- Sponsors — organizations where organization type is sponsor.
- Featured by tag — posts where tag is in a chosen set.
Combine multiple conditions with Match all to narrow further: "events in the current season, at the main venue, in the next 14 days".