Introduction 

Grid Elements carries forward the structural authoring concept of TYPO3 Backend Layouts from page level into content structures. A Grid Element is a content element that defines an explicit structural area in which editors place other content elements, including further Grid Elements. Grid definitions themselves are configured with TSconfig, the same configuration language used for Backend Layouts, which keeps them reusable, maintainable and suitable for version control alongside the rest of a project's configuration.

What it contains and organizes 

A Grid Element's children are ordinary tt_content records related to it through a dedicated parent-child relation, not through their position on the page, see Data Model for exactly how that is stored. Because a child can be any content element type, including another Grid Element, Grid Elements can be nested structurally across multiple levels without a separate setting being required to enable nesting, see Nesting.

More than visual placement 

These structural areas can express hierarchy, grouping, functional roles, restrictions and context, not only visual arrangement. A cell can declare which content types belong there and how many, or whether a given layout may be nested inside another at all. These rules are applied by the backend authoring workflow when editors create, place and move content, see Restrictions, Validation & Permissions. Structure therefore does more than determine where content appears; it can become part of what that content means and how it behaves. Core Concepts describes this authoring model, Structure-first Authoring, in more depth.

Authoring in the backend 

The Grid Wizard is TYPO3 Core's visual tool for defining a page's Backend Layout structure. Grid Elements provides its own Grid Wizard, carrying that same structural-definition concept to content-element level and allowing a Grid Element's row and column structure to be defined visually.

Editors add content to that structure with drag and drop and TYPO3's New Content Element Wizard, or more directly with the sophisticated Drag-In Wizard. It exposes suitable elements right inside the page layout and combines their selection, creation and placement in a single drag-in interaction. Used consistently, the Drag-In Wizard covers that workflow directly without requiring the New Content Element Wizard to be opened separately, letting an editor build structure and content together in place. Existing content can also be referenced into a structure instead of duplicated, letting the same content participate in more than one structure while remaining a single record.

Where Grid Elements comes from 

Grid Elements continues a line of structural authoring work that began in 2009 with the Grid View, Grid Wizard and Backend Layout concepts. Part of that page-level approach entered TYPO3 Core with TYPO3 4.5, while Grid Elements carried the broader concept forward to content-element level. See History and Design Background for that background, and the Coders.Care article Grid Elements: The Idea for the fuller narrative.

How Grid Elements relates to other extensions 

Grid Elements is sometimes discussed as interchangeable with narrower, container-only extensions such as b13/container (EXT:container). It is not: container behavior is one part of the broader Structure-first Authoring model described above, not the whole of it. See Grid Elements and EXT:container for a direct, technical comparison.