UICollectionView setting first cell to always be specific content - swift

Question

Hi so I'm using a side scrolling UICollectionView to display groups of people that the user makes. The groups are stored on my server and when the view loads, they load from the server. However I want the first cell to always be the same which is a cell which lets you create groups. This is the layout i need.
I know how to use multiple different custom cells, but how do I make it so the first cell is static and the cells after load content from my servers? Thanks :)
func collectionView(collectionView: UICollectionView, numberOfItemsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
return familyName.count
}
func collectionView(collectionView: UICollectionView, cellForItemAtIndexPath indexPath: NSIndexPath) -> UICollectionViewCell {
if indexPath.row == 0 {
let cell : AddGroupCollectionViewCell = collectionViewOutlet.dequeueReusableCellWithReuseIdentifier("Add", forIndexPath: indexPath) as! AddGroupCollectionViewCell
return cell
} else {
let cell : FriendGroupsCell = collectionViewOutlet.dequeueReusableCellWithReuseIdentifier("Cell", forIndexPath: indexPath) as! FriendGroupsCell
cell.groupImage.image = UIImage(named: "pp")
cell.groupNameLabel.text = familyName[indexPath.row]
return cell
}
}
This is my code and it misses out the first person in the array because the index path skips over it. How can i modify this so it works

Answer 1

UICollectionViewCell is leveraging reusing techniques to improve performance. Remember this. Nothing can be static in a cell, because this cell later will be on another index.
You can use collectionView:cellForItemAtIndexPath: to make the first cell always load the same images/labels via indexPath.row == 0
You can use prepareReuse method to clean up the resources in the cell. So if cell No.2 is going to be the new No.1 cell, it get a chance to clean up old resources.
func collectionView(collectionView: UICollectionView, cellForItemAtIndexPath indexPath: NSIndexPath) -> UICollectionViewCell {
let cell : AddGroupCollectionViewCell = collectionViewOutlet.dequeueReusableCellWithReuseIdentifier("Add", forIndexPath: indexPath) as! AddGroupCollectionViewCell
if indexPath.row == 0 {
cell.groupImage.image = UIImage(named: "new")
cell.groupNameLabel.text = "new"
} else {
cell.groupImage.image = UIImage(named: "pp")
cell.groupNameLabel.text = familyName[indexPath.row]
}
return cell
}