A Data Template in Sitecore is a schema or blueprint for an item. It defines what kind of data the item can hold by specifying the fields the item will have. Each field in a data template has a name, a type (such as Single-Line Text, Rich Text, Image, Number, Date, etc.), and possibly other settings.
Data templates are one of the foundational elements of a Sitecore solution. They model the data structures that your content editors work with and that your components render on the website.
Here’s a simple example. Suppose you’re building a blog site. You might create a “Blog Post” data template that includes the following fields:
- Title (Single-Line Text): The title of the blog post.
- Author (Single-Line Text): The author of the blog post.
- Published Date (Date): The date the blog post was published.
- Content (Rich Text): The body of the blog post.
When your content editors create a new blog post item based on the “Blog Post” data template, they fill in these fields, and the data they enter is what gets displayed on the website.
Data templates also support inheritance. For example, you might create a “Page Metadata” template that includes fields for SEO metadata, and then make your “Blog Post” template inherit from “Page Metadata”. Then every blog post item would have not only the “Blog Post” fields, but also the “Page Metadata” fields.
Data templates are created and managed using the Template Manager, which you can find in the Sitecore Desktop. They are stored as items in the /Sitecore/templates folder of the content tree.
