2. Setting Up

Building Your First Collection with CollectionBuilder-Remix

This walkthrough takes you from a blank Google Sheet to a live, published digital collection website — without installing any software. You'll need a free Google account, a free GitHub account, and a device with a web browser (a phone is enough).

Note: This walkthrough follows the same overall shape as the CollectionBuilder-Sheets Walkthrough and the CollectionBuilder-GH Walkthrough, with the steps adjusted for CB-Remix's spreadsheet-first, multilingual setup.

Step 1: Copy the spreadsheet template

CB-Remix reads its metadata from a spreadsheet published in OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods) format — not CSV, which is what the standard CB-Sheets template uses. Because of this, don't start from the CB-Sheets demo metadata; start from the CB-Remix spreadsheet template instead.

• Open the CollectionBuilder-Remix spreadsheet template.
• Make your own copy: File → Make a copy. This creates a version in your own Google Drive that you can edit freely.
• Rename the copy to something meaningful for your project (e.g., "My Collection Metadata").

Step 2: Publish your Google Sheet to the web as .ods

Once your metadata is filled in (or even just using the template's example rows to start), publish the sheet so CB-Remix can read it.

• Make sure the tab containing your metadata is the first (leftmost) tab in the spreadsheet. If you add extra tabs for notes or drafts, keep the metadata tab first — drag tabs to reorder them if needed.

• In your Google Sheet, go to File → Share → Publish to web.

• In the dialog that opens, use the two dropdowns in the Link tab to select:

  • Entire Document
  • OpenDocument spreadsheet (.ods) — this is the key difference from other CollectionBuilder flavors, which use CSV.

• Click Publish.

• If prompted "Are you sure you want to publish this selection?", click OK.

• Google will generate a shareable link. It will look something like:

  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRJhe6UcNZXItEtHlxQFOaHBBD2SDU8nyNOAROtcLWLrl83sYaCNBNYHOvhM_xZ7SVnnOrjCzo6U5_o/pub?output=ods

• Confirm the link ends in output=ods — if it says output=csv or anything else, go back and reselect the format.

• Copy this link. You'll paste it into your GitHub repository in Step 5.

• Leave Automatically republish when changes are made checked. This keeps the published link itself current whenever you edit the spreadsheet — though as you'll see in Step 6, you still need to tell GitHub when to pull those changes into your site.

Step 3: Create a GitHub account

If you don't already have one:

• Visit GitHub and click Sign up. A free account is all you need — CollectionBuilder does not require a paid plan.
• Check your email to verify your new account.
• (Video walkthrough of this step)

Step 4: Create your repository from the CB-Remix template

• While logged in to GitHub, visit the CollectionBuilder-Remix repository page.
• Click the green Use this template button, then choose Create a new repository from the dropdown.
• Leave the repository set to Public.
• Give it a lowercase name with no spaces or special characters (e.g., my-collection-demo).
• Click Create repository.

Step 5: Link your Google Sheet to the repository

• In your new repository, find the file named PASTE_YOUR_GOOGLE_SPREADSHEET_LINK_HERE.txt.
• Open it, and paste in the published .ods link you copied in Step 2, replacing the placeholder text.
• Commit the change directly on GitHub (the built-in editor and commit button are enough — no other software needed).

Step 6: Sync your content from the spreadsheet

Linking your spreadsheet in Step 5 tells CB-Remix where your metadata lives, but the site doesn't pull that data in on its own — you trigger the sync manually, using a GitHub Actions workflow built into the template.

• In your repository, click the Actions tab.
• In the left-hand list of workflows, select Sync content from Spreadsheet.
• Click the Run workflow dropdown, leave the branch set to main, then click the green Run workflow button.
• Wait for the run to finish — a yellow dot means it's still working, a green checkmark means it completed successfully, and a red X means something went wrong (double-check that your Step 5 link ends in output=ods and that the sheet is still published).
• This workflow reads your published spreadsheet, converts it into the data files CB-Remix uses to build pages, and commits those files back into your repository.

Whenever you add, edit, or translate content in the spreadsheet, come back to this step and run the workflow again — this is how your live site picks up changes. Editing the spreadsheet alone does not update the site by itself.

Step 7: Publish your site with GitHub Pages

• On your repository's homepage, click the Settings tab, then Pages in the left-hand menu.

• Under Source, leave the dropdown set to Deploy from a branch.

• Change the branch dropdown from "none" to main (leave the folder as /root), then click Save.

• Wait a few minutes while GitHub builds your site — you'll see a message that the build is in progress.

• Refresh the page. Once the build succeeds, you'll see the live URL for your site, following the pattern:

  https://username.github.io/repository-name

• To confirm any future changes have finished deploying, check for a green checkmark (rather than an orange dot) next to your latest commit on the repository's homepage.

Keeping Your Site Updated

Publishing your site in Step 7 is a one-time setup. After that, editing the spreadsheet by itself never changes the live site — you have to tell GitHub to pull in the new content each time. The cycle for every future update looks like this:

1. Edit your metadata in the Google Sheet — add rows, fix a field, add or update a translation.
2. Go to the Actions tab in your repository and select Sync content from Spreadsheet again (see Step 6).
3. Click Run workflow and wait for it to finish. This pulls your latest spreadsheet content, regenerates the site's data files, and commits them to the repository.
4. That commit automatically triggers GitHub Pages to rebuild the site — you don't need to touch the Pages settings again. Give it a few minutes, and check for the green checkmark next to the commit to confirm the build finished.
5. Refresh your live site in the browser to see the changes.

In short: the spreadsheet is where you write your changes, but the Sync content from Spreadsheet workflow is what publishes them. Skipping step 2–3 above is the most common reason a collection looks "stuck" after an edit.

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That's it — your CollectionBuilder-Remix site is live, and now you know the full loop for maintaining it: edit the spreadsheet, run the sync workflow, and let GitHub Pages take care of the rest.