What I really want in CMS online/app

Elements
1

I can’t find the earlier discussion; it might have been deleted. However, after thinking about it some more, I think it’s worth exposing what I really want in terms of the sync issue.

The Problem: if you enter CMS data in the online editor, it does not show up in the app.

The Solution: When you click Publish in the app, it should publish its files, then check to see if any files have been added or changed by the online editor and import them back to the app. Finally, the app should wrap up the Publish session by doing its backup.

This solves the biggest issue I wrote about earlier, and it shouldn’t involve lock race or other problems with synchronization (certainly not at the app end, as you can’t be doing anything else while it’s publishing). The one thing I can think of is that if someone were online editing while the app was in a Publish session you could get a short term sync issue. But I don’t see that as being very likely for most users, and it’s a problem that gets corrected next time you Publish.

2

I can understand your request to some extent, but I honestly can’t imagine there ever being a true “synchronization” between the app and the Online Editor.

There are simply too many dependencies that could potentially cause conflicts. And from a performance perspective alone, I don’t think it would make much sense.

I currently have more than 2,500 Markdown/frontmatter files. Even though I’m not using the Online Editor at the moment, I’ve moved all of these files out of the app and now manage them separately through my file manager.

The reason is that all of these files are also stored within the app/project itself. In my case, this caused the project to grow to almost 3 GB, which made saving the project extremely slow. Exporting the entire website also took forever, not to mention the amount of CPU performance Elements required during the export process with that many files. My MacBook would get extremely hot and the fans became very loud — and that’s saying something, considering I’m using a MacBook with an M4 chip and 64 GB of RAM.

But more importantly, I don’t think that’s really how the system is intended to work in the first place.

If you use it the way I believe it’s intended, the Elements app is there for designing and building the website, while the Elements Online Editor is there for managing the actual CMS data.

That’s why, in my opinion, a true synchronization between the app and the Online Editor doesn’t really make sense.

What would make sense is being able to access your CMS data directly from within the app, with the app being able to read and process those files without actually storing them inside the project itself. Of course, it should also be possible to create new CMS files directly from within the app.

I could be wrong, but looking at some of the changes introduced with the 3.0 update — especially the less obvious changes you don’t necessarily notice at first glance — I suspect this may actually be the direction they’re heading in.

Again, I could be wrong, but I have a feeling that this is where things are going.

3

I would settle for defining the CMS structure in the app, but only doing data creation online. I may be slightly unique in that I am in office much of the time, but have to update sites while traveling, and often when traveling, I’m away from the office more than a month.

4

thanks for the feedback! :slight_smile:

Yes, we would absolutely love to add syncing for CMS content, it’s actually something we’ve already discussed internally.

However, we’re currently focused on getting Elements 3 shipped and then finishing up Elements AI.