We’ve been hard at work on the new Online CMS Editor for Elements, and I’m pleased to share that it’s shaping up really nicely. What started as a simple editor quickly evolved as we explored what was possible, adding more powerful features along the way.
The CMS, along with the basic online editor for blogs and small sites, will be included with Elements at no extra cost. We believe this is a big step forward, and we’re not aware of any other Mac-based website builder offering this level of functionality out of the box.
An optional subscription will be available to unlock advanced features such as user groups, multiple content folders, and more. These capabilities are designed with freelancers and agencies in mind, making it easy to extend powerful CMS functionality to client projects.
We’ve also been refining the built-in CMS components. With any luck, the upgrade will feel seamless, but behind the scenes these improvements lay the groundwork for additional free CMS components.
This update will be free for all existing Elements users and will ship later this month.
Big compliments to you for the really fast and straightforward setup you’ve created for the Elements online editor. That’s exactly how it should be to make it accessible for many users.
In terms of features, I had hoped you might be a bit further along. However, there are already some features included that I wouldn’t necessarily have expected at this stage. Overall, the preview of the online editor looks very promising so far.
I’m curious to see what the paid version will bring, and I hope it will allow you to fund someone who can work on the CMS regularly and continue pushing its development forward.
For now, I wish you a great Easter holiday — take some time to recover and spend time with your families. We’re looking forward to the online release.
What I did not get completely as @ben was a bit fast and not very detailed on, was how we can create galleries. Can I create a gallery and link it then somehow (e.g. Shortcodes) to my blog.
To be specific, I have just started with a travel blog and I want to create blogs like this one https://500places.com/bamberg/. If such a blog will be possible I would immediately switch to Elements with this blog.
Great, so now I have to spend time creating The Bigger Book of CMS ;~).
The one thing that’s not clear to me is URL linking. In particular, what if I want to link to another blog post? Moreover, if I set up two folders, one for posts, one for articles, the same question, how would I link in the post I’m editing to another post or article?
I think I know the answer, but verification would be nice.
Right now there’s no built in way via to select the other post you want to link to link to, you’d have to know the URL to the second post and manually enter it, however, we would a nice way to achieve this in the online editor
That’s not the case. Elements backs up your project file, the online CMS content is separate from your elements project and would need to be backed up separately.
Just to piggy back on @ben’s reply, since you are hosted on Elements Hosting, your account is automatically backed up on the daily, so you have that added protection of having your Online CMS Content backed up without you having to go in and do it manually.
Would it be an option for Elements CMS 2.0 to separate these in a similar way to resources — meaning to keep them distinct from the “normal” webpages?
This would have several advantages. First of all, it would create a clear separation in the page inspector between regular webpages and Markdown content.
It would also help ensure that Markdown files are not included in the sitemap, which unfortunately is currently always the case if you forget to uncheck the corresponding option.
Additionally, it would make linking individual Markdown files within a CMS item or a CMS collection much clearer and more manageable.
I’ve attached a few screenshots to illustrate what I mean.
