Channels in MTDb are the primary way to display content. Most of the built-in pages are channels, including homepage, browse movies/people/news pages, as well as genre, keyword and production country pages.
You are free to modify these built-in channels to change what content they show or how it's displayed, as well as create your own custom channels from admin -> channels page.
Channels can also be nested. For example, you can create a new parent Trending movies channel, then create Comedy, Horror and Fantasy channels that will show movies from those genres, then set Trending movies channel to show these three channels. Now when Trending movies channel page is visited, it will show title and content for all three channels.
When channel is created it will be automatically viewable using the configured slug (by default slugified version of channel title). So channel named Trending movies would be accessible via example.com/trending-movies url. You can also assign channels to various menus across the site via Menu manager and set channel as homepage from admin > settings > general page.
This option allows listing all content that exists in the database (whether created manually from admin area or imported automatically from themoviedb). For example, setting Content to List all content of specified type and Type of content to Titles would show all movies and series that exist in admin -> titles page.
When more content is added in the future (titles in the case of the example above), List all content of specified type option will show this content automatically, you don't need to add the new content to this channel manually.
This option allows you to explicitly specify the exact content you want to show and manually reorder it. For example, you can create a Staff picks channel and add specific movies or series you want to showcase.
You can use Search for content to add... field to search for content by name, clicking on the result will add that item to the channel.
If you select Curated in How to order content field, you can reorder the content by dragging the content table rows using the handle on the left side of the table row.
When this option is selected, channel will automatically update its content based on Auto update method and other selected options every 24 hours.
This can import content from themoviedb or local database. For example, if Auto update method is set to Most popular and Fetch content from is set to TheMovieDB, the channel will automatically import 20 movies or series that are currently the most popular on TheMovieDB, store those movies in local database and add them to this channel.
And if Auto update method is set to Most popular and Fetch content from is set to Local database, it will fetch 20 most popular movies or series from the local database (admin -> titles) page and add these to the channel.
Channel content will only auto update every 24 hours. You can force an update manually by clicking the update content now button on channel page.
For channels to be updated automatically, you will need to set up a CRON JOB.
Most recently published videos - Imports movies, series or episodes (based on type of content value) that have recently had videos attached from admin area.
Most popular - Imports content from themoviedb or local database based on its current popularity.
Top rated - Imports content from themoviedb or local database based on its current aggregate user rating.
Upcoming - Imports content from themoviedb or local database that will release in theaters or streaming sites soon (within around 14 days)
In theaters - Imports movies from themoviedb or local database that is currently playing in theaters.
Discover (themoviedb only) - This is primarily used with filter titles by option to only import movies or series from themoviedb matching specific genre, keyword or production country.
Trending people - Imports people from themoviedb or local database based on their trending status.
When you've selected what content channel should display, this option can be used to filter that content further and only show the content that matches the specified value.
For example, if you set List all content of specified type in Content field, Genre in Filter content by field and select Action in Genre name field, channel will show all movies or series that have action genre.
Filters can be applied to both local database and themoviedb content. So using example above, you could import action movies from themoviedb or action movies that exist in local database.
Instead of selecting specific value for a filter (action genre from the example above), you can select Dynamic. This way filter value will be taken from the url. For example, if you name the channel "genre", set List all content of specified type in Content field, Genre in Filter content by field and select Dynamic (from url) in Genre name field, when visiting example.com/genre/action url channel will show action movies, when visiting example.com/genre/comedy url it will show comedy movies and so on for all genres. This way you only need to create one channel, instead of creating a separate channel for all possible genres.
Layout options allow specifying how channel contents will appear on the site. For example you can set Popular movies channel to either show movies in a grid or list format.
Layout - This is how channel content should be shown when that channel page is viewed on the site (eg. example.com/popular-movies)
Layout when nested - This is how channel content will be shown when this channel is shown as a sub-channel. For example, when Popular movies channel is shown inside homepage channel.
Channels shows 25 items per page by default. This controls how user can see more content from the channel, if all content can't be shown in a single page.
Infinite scroll - more content will be loaded automatically as user scrolls down the page.
List of page buttons - This is a classic pagination option that will show a list of all available page numbers.
Next/previous buttons only - This will only show next and previous page buttons, instead of showing a list of all pages.
In SEO section you can specify meta title and description for each channel individually. These will be visible to crawlers and bots only. By default these will default to channel title and description.
Here you can specify channel title and description, both will be shown to users on the site.
Title and description supports placeholders for when a filter is set. For an example genre channel discussed here, you can specify a placeholder for genre name by using {{channel.restriction.display_name}} so when user views a channel with title {{channel.restriction.display_name}} movies and series at example.com/genre/action url title would show as Action movies and series and at example.com/genre/comedy url as Comedy movies and series.