Mastering Wix Repeater Boxes: A Step-by-Step Guide

Hi, I’m Emily from the Wix Collective, and today I’m excited to share one of my favorite features in the Wix editor: Wix Repeater Boxes. These powerful containers help you create consistent, dynamic lists on your website, such as staff bios, product listings, or testimonials. In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through how to build repeater boxes from scratch, customize them, and troubleshoot common issues to make your designs look polished and professional.

What Are Wix Repeater Boxes?

Repeater boxes are essentially a set of containers that share the same structure and design. When you update one container, all others update automatically to match. This makes managing lists easy and efficient. For example, if you add or remove a button in one container, it will reflect across all containers in the repeater box.

How to Add a Wix Repeater Box

Let’s start by adding a repeater box to your Wix site:

1. Add a new section to your page to work in.

2. Click on

   Add

   in the Wix editor sidebar.

3. Navigate to

   Lists & Grids

   and scroll down to find

   Repeaters

   .

4. Select a repeater style you like. For this tutorial, we’ll choose a blank repeater to customize from scratch.

Exploring Repeater Box Settings

Once your repeater box is added, you’ll notice it comes with three containers by default. Click once on the repeater to access its settings:

• Layout:

  Adjust the layout style of the entire repeater section.

• Stretch:

  Toggle the repeater to stretch full width across your page.

• Margins:

  Customize margins to add breathing room around your repeater box.

Building Your Repeater Content

Now let’s populate each container with elements to create a staff bio list:

1. Add an image element to one container. This is perfect for staff photos.

2. Click the image, select

   Design

   , and choose a circular crop for a polished look.

3. Add a heading text element for the staff name. Center the text for alignment.

4. Add a text box below the heading for a short bio or description.

5. Finally, add a button element for actions like “View Profile” or “Contact.”

Customizing Each Item in Your Repeater

Each container initially copies the same content, but you can easily customize them individually:

• Change the text in each container by double-clicking the text box and typing new content.

• Swap images by selecting the image and uploading or choosing new ones from sources like Unsplash.

• Remember: resizing an element like an image or button in one container resizes it in all containers, maintaining uniformity.

Adding or Removing Items from Your Repeater

Need to add more staff members? Here’s how to manage your repeater items:

1. Select the repeater box to highlight it.

2. Click

   Manage Items

   to open the item list.

3. To add a new item, select an existing item and hit

   Duplicate

   .

4. To remove an item, select it and click

   Delete

   .

You can add as many items as you want — I’ve never hit a limit!

Common Layout Challenges and How to Solve Them

Uneven Number of Items

One common issue is when your repeater has an uneven number of items. This often leaves an awkward empty gap in the layout, which can look unbalanced.

Unfortunately, Wix doesn’t currently offer a perfect fix for this. You can adjust spacing in the layout settings, but it won’t fully solve the gap. You’ll need to decide if this layout quirk works for your design or consider alternative approaches.

Different Content Lengths Causing Misalignment

Another challenge arises when some items have longer text content, such as longer bios, which pushes buttons and other elements down, resulting in uneven alignment across your repeater.

Here are some tips to handle this:

• Adjust the size of the container box and reposition elements like buttons to better fit varying content lengths.

• Use the return key in text boxes to manually add space, helping align buttons across different items. It’s a bit of a hack, but it can improve consistency.

• For more advanced layouts, consider using columns instead of repeaters — a topic for another tutorial.

Additional Tips and Troubleshooting

Text Formatting Issues

Be cautious when copying and pasting text into repeater boxes. Sometimes pasted text brings unwanted formatting that causes alignment issues like mixed left and center justification. If this happens:

• Try deleting the problematic text box and typing the content manually.

• Avoid pasting directly from other documents or web pages to prevent inconsistent formatting.

Grouped Items Cannot Be Added to Repeaters

It’s important to know that grouped elements cannot be added into repeater boxes. If you try to copy a group and paste it inside a repeater, it won’t work. You’ll need to add individual elements instead.

Wrapping Up

Wix Repeater Boxes are an excellent tool for creating dynamic, uniform lists that make website management easier and more efficient. While they can sometimes be a bit tricky with layout quirks and formatting challenges, the benefits often outweigh the frustrations.

Remember these key points as you work with repeater boxes:

• All containers share the same structure and element sizes.

• You can add, duplicate, or remove items infinitely.

• Uneven items and varying text lengths can cause layout misalignment but can be managed with manual tweaks.

• Copy-pasting text can introduce formatting issues—manual entry is often best.

• Grouped elements cannot be added inside repeaters.

If you want to explore more Wix tips and templates, check out wixcollective.com/templates. Happy designing!