As we continue our work on the Elements CMS, we’re starting to flesh out some of the finer details, like pagination (yes, the thrilling stuff!). This latest Dev Diary gives you another peek at just how powerful, flexible, and open our new CMS is shaping up to be.
We’re building fast, not just because we’re excited, but because we know you are. That said, the CMS isn’t quite ready to ship in Elements just yet. These early previews are your chance to follow along, offer feedback, and help shape its development.
With version 1.0 just around the corner, the price of Elements will increase starting June 1st. If you’ve been thinking about building your site with Elements, now’s a great time to jump in.
Visit elementsapp.io to grab your license and lock in the current pricing!
Thanks for Your Feedback
These features came directly from your suggestions, as always, we’d love to hear what you think so far. Your feedback truly makes all the difference
Haha, I know we’re just as eager to get it into your hands! But we want to make sure it’s solid and a bit more complete before it ships in a build. Nothing worse than giving you something too early and then having to say, “Yeah… you’ll need to re-do all that.” Hang in there… it’s getting closer!
@ben In the video, you said you were going to explain what Collection Before and Collection After is and give a use case. I don’t think you covered that in the video?
@Ben will be able to explain it in more detail (he’s AFK right now). But it’s basically so you can place related items into the collection component, like pagination.
I viewed the video again (paying more attention ) and I can now see where the pagination items are being placed (in the Collection Before and Collection After) and it all makes sense.
Just to be clear! As far as I know, I have already bought a license. In this respect, the reminder emails totally irritate me! Have I overlooked something?
Nice. The only thing that irritates me is the order of the items in the collection component (after - before - items). It would feel more natural to me if it was (before - items - after) since that reflects the natural order on the page eventually.
You’re absolutely right — layouts 1 and 2 are easily achievable using the Collection component.
Layouts 3 and 4 are possible as well, but they would require a bit more effort — likely involving a number of custom classes to get the styling and layout just right.
That said, it’s worth noting that the CMS we’re building is completely open, which means anyone can create custom components that work with CMS data. So if a developer wanted to build alternative collection layouts (like the ones you’ve shown), it would be fairly straightforward to do so
Exactly — you place the Pagination component either before or after the items loop, depending on where you want it to appear.
In the future, we may introduce other collection-related components that would also be placed in these drop zones — things like filters, sorting controls, and more
Thanks for Your Feedback
we’re just as eager to get it into your hands! But we want to make sure it’s solid and a bit more complete before it ships in a build. Nothing worse than giving you something too early and then having to say, “Yeah… you’ll need to re-do all that.” Hang in there… it’s getting closer!
) and I can now see where the pagination items are being placed (in the Collection Before and Collection After) and it all makes sense. 
