Process Documentation with CMS

Elements Elements CMS
1

@ben I’m attempting to build a process documentation browser on one of my sites using the CMS. It is very similar to a blog except there is not a separate POST page, the posts are displayed alongside the items (index). Selecting an item displays the associated article in the right column.

The problem that I’m facing is that there is currently no way to tell the CMS that I want one of the items in the index to be displayed when the page is opened. Currently, what happens when the page opens, and the post column displays “item not found.”

Is there some way of being able to specify an initially selected item?

The next question is regarding pagination. There currently does not appear to be a way to tellthe CMS to display ALL of the items in a collection. To work around this, I have to set the number of items to some arbitrarily large number.

Is there another way to tell it to display all items in the collection?

I’m also assuming that given the fact that the posts are being displayed on the same page as the list of items, that there can only be a single collection on the page, correct?

Some guidance on whether this approach makes any sense would be appreciated.

2

that what I do here, only way I worked around that issue

https://sjwjaw.co.uk/blogsp/?item=today today is the post

both collection and item are on same page

just click on the notes on the left

3

project if it helps

elementsapp://downloadDocument/oL1M5AftPYzZ

all of the images are cms driven, including random cms images

4

@upssjw Aloha Steve, thanks for that, it is close to what I’m after, except I want the index of articles to be always visible alongside the content display. The idea being that the reader is not being jerked away from following the steps in the process.

I’ll take a look at your project to see how you hooked it up, so there is always an article selected when the page is opened.

Thanks for sharing.

5

Just take collection out of the modal

6

I have multiple collections on other cms projects on the link the first page has two collections to show a featured post

7

How were you able to edit the URL for the blog page in order to add the link to the initial post?

8

I created a link in the menu and hid the page the link points to the page. The link has the the post I want to open, so the link is acting as the page in the menu

It’s just /?item=today in my case on the end of the link I created could have been any post title

The link and page have the same name

9

might help

10

OK, I think I have it figured out and working on my test page. Wiuld be nice if the CMS would just allow you to specify an opening article, but your approach at least works for now. Although it did not seem to like a complicated filename. Once I changed it to something simple it worked.

Lots more experimenting to be done.

Thanks for your help.

11

Agree would be easier if an option to add the post name

12

these pages have multi collections, all random images from cms

https://forums.realmacsoftware.com/t/cms-image-driven/53466/22?u=upssjw