So I have a few queries that I would appreciate if someone can answer:
CMS Collections for blog posts: Am I correct that you can only have one blog post with one Collection Posts template for the design of every page? Meaning that all posts have to look exactly the same… can you not have say 4 templates to use for this?
If you cannot do the above and you separate four topics of blog posts so you have four different Collection Post templates, how do you then make the homepage display from all four Collection Lists instead of just the one? Is this possible?
How do you style in the post body so you have more design control? For example, How do you move paragraphs to a certain start point rather than flush left? And how do you get images floating left and right to each other without a giant gap between them as even if I put both to 48% width when displayed there is a large divide…
Are these things achievable with a developer adding code to the site?
Is creating static pages and duplicating to redesign the next best option? How does this affect the SEO?
You can. You can develop various sections with different looks and use them in the same template page, depending on a CMS variable, for example, category. My local blog has 1 collection for posts but 5 categories: photo, video, report, event, sight. I have different sections designed in the template page, some with redundant information. Depending on the category set for each post, the sections appear or not, using conditional visibility, and compose a different layout.
Make a grid made of several Collection Lists, that will show content from various Collections. That’s more an editorial work than fully automatic one, but editorial (human, manual choices) is vastly superior to automatic.
Are you askin about how to style content in a RT? Can you provide example of where you are vs. where you’d like to be?
Most of them should be available to a designer adding no code, if not all of them.
Duplicating one page to kickstart the design of a new one? This is almost best practice. Duplication of CONTENT harms SEO, not duplication of structure with class names etc. Especially if the structure is good to begin with.
Thank you so much for your reply. You’re a gem! I greatly appreciate it. Following this, I have a few more questions:
Following on from your feedback… so currently I have one collection blog post with 4 categories assigned. Each category will require a different style template. So I can either do what you suggested and use conditional visibility or am I better off creating 4 different Collection Lists for each category so I can have a corresponding template? Is then essentially having 4 different blogs on the same website bad practice for analytics etc. rather than all under the 1 with just conditional visibility applied?
The fact that I can do what you said about making editorial home page rather than fully automatic is great and ideal for me. The alternative to creating static pages and duplicating I am more than happy to do but I wonder whether the limit of 100 pages will become an issue down the track. But I guess you could archive or create one collection for these in the future?
What would be the best solution? Creating the 4 collection page blogs so I have 4 corresponding templates, 1 collection page blog with 1 template using conditional visibility or just designing, duplicating and altering as you mentioned which is best practice? So you have an idea, here is an example of top info for Blog 1 and then Blog 2 so really only the icons etc. have been removed from 1 to 2 and space from top of image moved up.
In relation to styling the RT, I have created a Style Guide page which seems to do a lot, however, the discrepancy between the actual Post with the content to the appearance in the template is quite vast and I don’t know how to control this spacing variation. For example, the base of text and next image is hugely different and also the alignment of the text next to image - how do I get this to move so it aligns with image above? Attached are images so you can see the difference.
Lastly, am I correct that all blog posts work to a max size of 1300 pixels? So I can have the home page with an image extending way further than what I can have the maximum in the blog post? I have attached pics so you can see what I am talking about regarding image width.
That’s really your choice depending on the complexity. That will never be a SEO problem. A blog is a blog and everything in it is a post, so wether you have a root post with categories, or straight away 4 types of root posts… isn’t important. You can even use a category collection and assigne same categories to different kind of posts.
I once had a collection to reference all kind of posts, like 1 item was just listing the url of all types of posts. But I don’t recommend it, it’s too much work.
I don’t know but if you’re having more than 100 pages, you maybe missed something along the way… repetitive content structure means CMS. Why would you have more than 100 static pages? Can’t those be CMS?
Kind of your decision here. Downside of 1 collection only is that the template is more complex and more difficult to maintain, less optimized. Downside of 4 collections is not being able to list items in one list.
But if the example you’re showing is true and only a few details change… then 1 collection.
Welcome CMS structure/strategy questions are interesting. there is no definitive answer, it’s all about finding the appropriate Design solution so it matches your goals and most importantly, it’s easy to feed and maintain down the road. The local blog I mentionned earlier, I regret all the choices I made, because it overcomplicated. As a result, I refrain to post on it. Kind of a failure.
So I have attached this first image of what I would like to achieve. And what I was trying to say yesterday (very unclearly) was that what I view in the Blog with the Rich Text adding images to what I then see on the Blog Template is different. The spacing varies greatly between the images and where the text aligns next to the image. I have marked them up so hopefully that helps.
Or do I just ignore how it looks in the CMS Blog Section ??? But if I put two larger size images one floating left and the other right, they still appear above and below each other in the template.
Hi again. So I think I have worked it out… somewhat. You affect all the content etc. in the Rich Text editor. So I have a Style Guide page which has two images next to each other and a full size as I would like which does absolutely nothing when you put images in the CMS. So you can only style All images as a class within the nested Rich Text rather than have two classes? Could you add code to achieve this or would the alternative be to have to photoshop two images together with the space between them so it’s just one image? How do these images then work with responsiveness within Rich Text? Also if this is the case, you can’t style Pull out quotes in two different ways or in two different positions? It has to only be the one option. This seems odd that you can’t control this better. Am I correct?
Nothing is limited, where does this limitation come form?
CMS structure/strategy questions are interesting. there is no definitive answer, it’s all about finding the appropriate Design solution so it matches your goals and most importantly, it’s easy to feed and maintain down the road. The local blog I mentionned earlier, I regret all the choices I made, because it overcomplicated. As a result, I refrain to post on it. Kind of a failure.
