Alternate & Static Items

A loop repeats one Global Block for every item. Alternates and Static Items break
that rule at chosen positions — a featured card every third post, a call-to-action tile
halfway down the grid.

Both live in the Advanced popout inside Content → Repeated Block, and both work on Post Loop Builder and Repeater Field. Term Loop Builder does not expose these controls.

The difference between them

This is the whole point of having two features, and it's easy to miss:

• An Alternate replaces the design for an item. The item is still there, still gets
  its own data — it just renders through a different Global Block. Ten posts with an
  alternate on every third still produce ten cards.
• A Static Item is an extra tile. It doesn't consume an item, so nothing is
  displaced: it's inserted into the sequence and the loop carries on where it left off.
  Ten posts with one static item produce eleven tiles, and all ten posts still appear.

Use an alternate when a post should look different. Use a static item when you want
something that isn't a post at all — an advert, a newsletter signup, a promo card.

Adding one

Open Content > Repeated Block > Advanced and click Add
Item under Alternates or Static Items. Each item has the same four controls:

• Global Block — the Global Block to render at this position.
• Position — which item in the sequence, counting from 1.
• Repeat — off means "this position only"; on means "keep going".
• Frequency — how many items apart the repeats are. Only appears once Repeat is on.

The screenshot above reads: from item 3, every 3rd item uses the Feature Card — so items
3, 6, 9, and so on.

With Repeat off, Position 3 alone means exactly one substitution, at item 3.

You can add several entries to either list. They're evaluated in order and the first one
that matches a position wins, so put your most specific rules first.

Which one wins

When a position could be claimed by more than one rule, Breakdance resolves it in a fixed
order:

1. Static Items are checked first.
2. Then Alternates.
3. Otherwise the default Global Block from Repeated Block.

So a static item and an alternate that both target position 4 will produce the static
item.

Caution: a Frequency of 1 or less is ignored — Breakdance treats it as effectively
infinite so the rule fires once and never repeats. For static items this is a guard, not
a quirk: a static item every 1 position never consumes an item, so the loop would keep
inserting tiles forever and the request would hang. If a repeat isn't repeating, check
that Frequency is 2 or more.

Static items at the end

A static item positioned just past the last real item still renders. If a loop returns
six posts and you put a static item at position 7, you get the six posts followed by your
tile. Only the position immediately after the last item works this way; positions farther past the end do not insert a tile.

A caveat about counting

Positions count rendered tiles, not posts. Because a static item occupies a position
without consuming a post, adding one shifts every position after it by one. If you have
an alternate on every third item and then insert a static item at position 4, the
alternate's rhythm relative to the posts changes. Set up static items first, then place
alternates against the sequence you can see in the canvas.