Previous and Next links and collections

[ironfish1000]

Hello, noobie to 11ty, trying to understand things.

My understanding about Previous and Next links is that they are generated from collections:
https://www.11ty.dev/docs/filters/collection-items/

Eg:

{% assign previousPost = collections.posts | getPreviousCollectionItem: page %}
{% assign nextPost = collections.posts | getNextCollectionItem: page %}

And that a template becomes part of a collection by defining "tags", as per:
https://www.11ty.dev/docs/collections/

---
tags: post
title: Hot Take—Social Media is Considered Harmful
---

This will place this mypost.md into the post collection with all other pieces of content sharing the post tag. To reference this collection and make a list of all posts, use the collections object in any template:
Liquid
Nunjucks
11ty.js
11ty.cjs

<ul>
{%- for post in collections.post -%}
  <li>{{ post.data.title }}</li>
{%- endfor -%}
</ul>

I am using the Eleventy Base Blog v9 starter and it does not seem to incorporate the above:

Eg

This starter has /content/blog/ with a number of sample blog templates and:

1. even though they do not contain "tags: post" in front matter, they do show up in the Previous and Next links. This seems to contradict the docs above. Also I have not been able to find anything that describes how to actually set a post to be part of a collection and hence Previous and Next links.

2. firstpost.md contains "tags: another tag" and this is used as a hierachical / taxonomy, and is not used to define it as part of a collection, even though https://www.11ty.dev/docs/filters/collection-items/ says "Take care to note that tags have a singular purpose in Eleventy: to construct collections of content. Some blogging platforms use Tags to refer to a hierarchy of labels for the content (e.g. a tag cloud)." So my experience here again directly contradicts what the docs say.

Also:

3. I have created a /content/pages/ folder with some pages and would like those pages to have their own Previous and Next links (just for the pages in this folder) and I think to do this they have to be part of a collection and have tried all the ways I can think of to try and achieve that, because I have not been able to find docs or articles about how to do this, but with no luck. I have tried eg:

• setting eg "tags: page" in front matter to try and form a collection that way and using {%- for post in collections.page -%} < This is what the docs say to do but does not work
• When I use "tags: page", "page" is displayed as a taxonomy, but I would not want that to be a taxonomy.
• using a layout called mypage.njk and setting a template to this layout using layout: mypage and then using {%- for post in collections.mypage -%} to no luck. < I am trying to guess at how things work, but this quess did not work.

4. I am wondering why the docs say: Take care to note that tags have a singular purpose in Eleventy: to construct collections of content. Some blogging platforms use Tags to refer to a hierarchy of labels for the content (e.g. a tag cloud). In general, it is widely accepted to use "tags" as a way to apply taxonomy to content. Why would 11ty choose to use this term to define a collection? And it seems 11ty in this starter is not actually using tags to construct collections.....

I have other questions regarding all this but I am so confused by this, I think I should wait to first understand the answers to the above issues.

Any help is much appreciated, thanks ahead of time.

[ironfish1000]

Not getting a response to my post, and needing to finish a project, I spend hours trying to figure this out, and I have posted the steps below:

**** In eleventy-base-blog, the official starter package, I noticed blog.11tydata.js

This file contains:

export default {
tags: [
"posts"
],
"layout": "layouts/post.njk",
};

So I presume that it sets default values for all content files in the folder

**** I copied blog.11tydata.js to the folder named "pages" containing the pages that I want to have previous / next links

**** I renamed this file to pages.11tydata.js - I presume this file name needs to contain the name of the folder it is in

**** I edited the file to suit

export default {
tags: [
"pages"
],
"layout": "layouts/page.njk",
};

This assigns all pages the tag "pages" and to use the layout "page.njk"

**** I created "layouts/page.njk" by copying it from "posts.njk"

**** I edited page.njk and changed it to:

{%- if collections.pages %}
{%- set previousPost = collections.pages | getPreviousCollectionItem %}
{%- set nextPost = collections.pages | getNextCollectionItem %}
{%- if nextPost or previousPost %}

{%- if previousPost %}
• ← Previous
  {{ previousPost.data.title }}
{% endif %} {%- if nextPost %}
• Next →
  {{ nextPost.data.title }}
{% endif %}

{%- endif %} {%- endif %}

**** This does show previous and next links for the content files in "pages" folder

**** But this did not resolve the issue of the tag "Pages" as being shown as a taxonomy in each page

But I noticed that

{%- if tags %}
Tags:

{%- for tag in tags | filterTagList %}
{%- set tagUrl %}/tags/{{ tag | slugify }}/{% endset %}

• {{ tag }}{%- if not loop.last %}, {% endif %}

{%- endfor %}

    Contains filterTagList

**** I found filterTagList in filter.js and edited it

eleventyConfig.addFilter("filterTagList", function filterTagList(tags) {
	return (tags || []).filter(tag => ["all", "posts", "pages"].indexOf(tag) === -1);
});

**** This now gives the desired result

I would like to suggest that this is not a straightforward way to be able to add Previous and Next links to a set of pages in a folder.

A feauture request would be to add a function / code where all content files in a folder can have Previous and Next links.

Also would like to suggest that the docs which currently say:

Take care to note that tags have a singular purpose in Eleventy: to construct collections of content. Some blogging platforms use Tags to refer to a hierarchy of labels for the content (e.g. a tag cloud).

I am using the official "Eleventy Base Blog v9" and it does use tags not only for collections but also for a hierarchy of labels.