What Is Editable In Tina

What Is Editable In Tina

Files: src/content/, src/config/, src/i18n/, tina/ · Skill level: Beginner

Keep npm run dev running, open http://localhost:4321/admin/, and click Enter Edit Mode. You need no account and no password. Open the menu at the top left, then pick an entry, a language folder, and a file. Tina has the full guide. Everything below exists in English, French, and Arabic, and an edit changes one language.

The menu has four groups: Pages, Collections, Sections, and Settings.

Where Each Page Is Edited

The last column lists the blocks in the page’s own form, such as Hero Section or Cta Section. Fill one in to change that section on this page only. Every other section comes from Section defaults.

The form of Other pages lists every block those pages can use. A block only works on a page that shows that section.

Most page forms also have Header layout (pill, bar, or overlay), Footer layout (wordmark, columns, or email), Show the contact dock, Robots, Leave out of the sitemap, Leave out of the site search, Leave out of llms.txt and Markdown copies, and Draft.

Journal posts and the legal pages use a rich text editor. Its Embed button adds a Button, Notice, Callout, image list, or another of the theme’s components. Project, service, and team member text uses the same editor, without components.

New Entries

Use Create New in Projects, Services, Journal, Team, Authors, and Other pages. The header menu doesn’t pick up a new project or service, so add its link in Menus. See Menus.

A new entry with only a title won’t break the site, and it builds. Its card or page shows what you filled in, and images and other fields stay empty until you add them, so fill them in before you publish.

Sections

Section defaults holds the shared content and options of each section, 25 files in all, in each language. A change there shows on every page that uses the section, unless the page has filled in its own block.

To hide a section, use its Enable field. To change its look, use Options > Layout. /elements/ previews every layout. The hero and the call to action also have Options > Webgl (dots, flow, or none) for an animated background.

Site-Wide Content

Margo has three header layouts and three footer layouts. Choose them in Site settings > Settings > Layout, or per page with Header layout and Footer layout. Settings also holds Color Mode, Search, Smooth Scroll, Animation, Cookie Consent, Theme Credit, Page Actions, Contact Dock, Contact Info, Navigation Button, Copyright, Subscription, Contact Form Action, and Contact Form Provider. Leave Layout Switcher off: it is for the theme’s own demo.

The Menus Form

The menu form follows the menu file. Open a dropdown with Dropdown links makes a dropdown, and a dropdown link can open its own. Open a mega menu adds Mega menu columns, the Mega menu photo card, and the Mega menu bottom row:

• In the card, Project is the file name of a project, such as ceramic-forms. Empty uses the first project marked Featured.
• In the bottom row, each of the Links can have an Action: search turns it into the site search button, and Shortcut is its key hint.

Some fields in this form do nothing in Margo. They are kept so the files have the same shape as in other themes:

• Order doesn’t move an item. Items show in the order of the list, so drag them to reorder.
• Icon on mega menu links doesn’t show. No menu link has an icon.
• Description and Items on the card don’t show. The card shows the project’s cover, title, and year.

The form edits dropdowns up to four levels deep. For a deeper menu, edit src/config/menu.<language>.json in a text editor. The demo menu doesn’t go that deep.

If You Clear A Field

In a page’s form, a field you never filled uses the default. A field you clear is saved empty, which hides that text or image on that page.

Tina can’t bring the default back by itself. To get the text back, do either of these:

• Copy it from Section defaults into the field.
• Remove the empty line from the page’s file in src/content/ with a text editor.

What The Preview Doesn’t Update

Click-to-edit works on the page content, the call to action, and the footer. The header, the menus, and values from Site settings, such as the contact details, don’t change while you type. They update when you save. Some Site settings also need npm run dev restarted.

These have no click-to-edit outline, so change them in their forms: the header and menus, values from Site settings, images with no alt field, categories and tags, and one-word options such as layouts. Online with Tina Cloud there are forms only.

When Tina saves, it removes comments and rewrites Markdown in its own style, such as * in place of -. Your words and values stay, and the comments’ text is kept as the note under each field. If you also edit content files by hand, run npm run tina:audit. It tells you if a save would lose anything.

What Stays In Code

• Which sections a page has, and their order: the route in src/pages/[...lang]/. You can hide a section with its Enable field.
• New sections, new page routes, new fields, and new layouts. Then run npm run tina:generate so the editor offers them, and commit tina/generated/collections.json.
• Colors and type scale (src/styles/theme.css) and fonts (src/config/fonts.json).
• The list of languages. See Internationalization. After you add or remove one, run npm run tina:generate, then npm run dev once.
• The icons and the animated backgrounds themselves. Icon names and the background choice are editable.
• The fields of the contact form are editable, but its markup is in src/layouts/components/widgets/ContactForm.astro.

Versions And Testing

This edition is tested on Astro 7.4.12 and Node 22, with tinacms 3.15.1, @tinacms/cli 4.0.4, @tinacms/astro 0.8.0, and React 19.3.1. They are pinned in package.json. The live preview uses experimental features of @tinacms/astro, so test it before you upgrade. Node must be 22.23.4 or later, on version 22 or 24, because Tina’s command line tool supports only those two.

We saved every content and settings file through the editor and checked that nothing was lost, saved an Arabic page at /admin/, and checked that the live preview shows the same page as the built site on 200 page addresses in the three languages. We have not run online editing against a live Tina Cloud project. Try one save on a copy of your site before you rely on it.

Do It With AI

I use the Tina edition of Margo. Tell me where to edit [TEXT OR SETTING] in /admin/: the entry, the
language folder, the file, and the field. If it comes from Section defaults, say which pages will
change, and how to change it on one page only. Don't change any files.