Roadmap Questions – Why no Pages?

Hi,

We have plans for a page builder what also means separation of posts and pages in the UI, but it is an idea strictly connected with our upcoming block editor. At this moment the “hidden post” feature is enough for most cases connected with pages. When we will be ready – we will implement pages with page builder which will make a real difference between posts and pages.

Are you saying that the Pages feature is coming in at the same time as the Block Editor?

Is there any real and immediate advantage to the Block Editor besides “another way to input text?”

The Block Editor is in my opinion much better solution for any people who just want to write blogs based on Publii – it behaves much better than current WYSIWYG editor in many cases (e.g. writing a blog post with code examples). The WYSIWYG editor still will be available as it is a good solution to everybody who needs a full control over post content HTML.

Exactly. But if all that’s needed is a pure Blog there are dozens and dozens of fast, minimal and secure pieces of software already. People writing pure Blogs already have so many, many cheap examples that allow for code highlighting, etc.

What doesn’t exist is a piece of software that allows for the creation of simple Webpages on a static site, to not have to awkwardly work around every single Page being an unlinked Blog Post. <span style=”text-decoration: underline;”>No other Visual Editor for building Static Sites exists, to my knowledge.</span>

Simple modifications of Type of Page, like not having Mandatory page titles on every Page because it’s actually a disguised Post.

My concern is not about the lack of a separate UI for Pages, it’s the fact that Publii’s whole strength and draw is it’s ease of use. If something as fundamental as having any page on your Website that ISN’T a Blog Post requires hours of manual workarounds, hacking and kludgy code, this goes against the entire philosophy of usability of the project. Being able to create anything other than a Blog Post with it is such a fundamental feature that I was shocked when I found that Publii DIDN’T allow it.

I’m sure that I’m not the only one scratching his head and wondering why this feature doesn’t exist.

Websites consist of Pages, not usually Posts. Most websites have a dedicated Blog Page, but are centred around Pages.

By implementing in the code the current hard to follow instructions and kludy workarounds that each individual end user has to do, you massively drop the barriers to entry for anybody wanting to build a functional website, opening Publii up to the people who really need it – everybody who can’t code.

I am not dismissing the hard work that has already been put into the Block Editor, but that is improving a feature that already exists very capably in the software, whereas Pages is so fundamental to building any website other than a Generic High Schoolers Code Blog that in my opinion the software wouldn’t be considered even a Beta release without it.

If I was to advocate more effectively for the sooner inclusion of Pages into the software, what would that process look like? I’ve contributed $100+ dollars to the project in the past, switched several developer friends over to using it for simple Projects, but the lack of Pages is holding all of us back. Publii filles such an important niche, it is a worthy project and deserves support, but I feel like lacking this feature is a game-ender.

Hi Devs,

Thank you for listening to our concerns and for building such a great community.

I’m not a Web Developer Expert so I won’t be able to give a comprehensive list, but I’ll try my best. It may be necessary to canvas others as to what they think should be included in Pages. I’ll explain it as best as I can.

• There should be a separate section above Posts, in the same style but it lists all the Pages in the site.
• Pages should consist of a content area, with no title inherently attached to it the way that current Posts have (for example, I should be able to make a Page with no mandatory title viable at the top)
• Pages should not be inherently linked or related to each other the way that Posts are.
• Pages must be able to have embedded html (as current Posts can) so that I can embed an external contact form, etc.
• Pages must have their own unique URL so they can be addressed and linked to from other parts of the site.

Kind of a stretch goal, but it should be possible to group multiple Pages under a kind of content group, so when creating Documentation sites, multiple pages can be linked together under a common topic. That Topic can’t be clicked on but just serves to gather up and order all the collected Pages. Right now I’m using Gitbook to do this for a few sites. Right now from what I can see Publii (in the Documentation themes) only allows a single Post to be a section and each section of that page is a new area under the same category, but for sites with more than a few short pages of documentation, I would need to be able to group multiple, separate pages under the same category. Gitbook does this, and I currently have a few sites hosted there but I would prefer to switch them all the Publii sites as I like this software better.

Other stuff like sidebars and etc are well beyond the scope of Pages I would think, if someone want’s that they’ll use WordPress.

I’ll update this thread if I think of anything else.

If you would like to set up a chat to discuss, please post your email address and I’ll get in touch.

Here is my opinion:

• We have the option of setting a post to be the homepage of your website.
• We have the option of hiding a post so it doesn’t show op in any post lists.
• We have the option of controlling the menu to link directly to these hidden posts (=webpages)

Honestly, I don’t see what more the developers should do. The functionality of pages is already there and very easy to use. At best, developers could rename the option ‘hidden post’ to ‘webpage’ or something, to make it a bit clearer.

I’m really weary of adding functionality that will make Publii needlessly complicated, and might introduce bugs. The strength of Publii is in its simplicity for new users and tweaking power for advanced users (hbs).

Really, if it’s up to me, the best thing the developers could do at this moment, is improve  the documentation (eg. include more examples, more structured documentation), fix bugs and develop more themes. The software is perfect as it is.

[anonymous] wrote:

The reason that I ask for these features is exactly that – converting existing Posts into Pages is hacky and awkward.

Could not agree more. I came from WordPress/Ghost, and found Publii easy to use. But creating a page was a very tough job for me, initially. I had to go through developer docs and do some coding stuffs to achieve the desired output.

I can create a post template and make it like a page, but the whole point of using publii is to make the lives of non-devs easier.

I could have agreed previously when they didn’t have the option to make a post your homepage. That required some minor fiddling with the hbs-files such that the default ‘Recent posts’-homepage could be bypassed. It was rather annoying, indeed!

But now that they included the option of setting a post as Homepage, that’s not necessary anymore. So what are you still using ‘coding stuffs’ for?

Wouldn’t simply renaming the option ‘Hidden’ to ‘Webpage’ help solve the confusion?

What is the status of this feature request? Will there be the ability to make pages in Publii 1.0?

I only recently discovered Publii. It looks really nice and ticks all the boxes for a CMS I was looking for! When I installed it (only last week) I was surprised that it didn’t have the ability to make pages but only posts.

The question that I think Publii must ask (IMHO) is what they want to be: a blogging system or a CMS for building websites?

I hope the latter because that’s what I want to use it for :-). But no hard feelings if they choose otherwise :-).

[anonymous]

Thank your for your quick reply!

Is it possible with Publii to change the following url:
https://www.dolphinstairliftseastanglia.com/tags/stair-lifts-for-straight-stairs/

into (for example) this url:
https://www.dolphinstairliftseastanglia.com/stairlifts/stair-lifts-for-straight-stairs/

In other words: show the name of the tag? This way it would be possible to get nice structured urls!

[anonymous] wrote:

What is the status of this feature request? Will there be the ability to make pages in Publii 1.0?

I only recently discovered Publii. It looks really nice and ticks all the boxes for a CMS I was looking for! When I installed it (only last week) I was surprised that it didn’t have the ability to make pages but only posts.

The question that I think Publii must ask (IMHO) is what they want to be: a blogging system or a CMS for building websites?

I hope the latter because that’s what I want to use it for :-). But no hard feelings if they choose otherwise :-).

I’m in the same mind, right now it is a clear choice for running a Blog, but I want to be able to design whole websites in it so I hope that the direction they take it in.

@itips3727

Every page on the internet should have a semantic address. The word ‘tag’ is not semantic. It would be great if it was possible to give every page on Publii a real semantic address. There are articles on the internet about the logic of an internet address.

I will not use AMP because it’s a Google developed technology only and as far as I now the are going to deprecated it.

@champi
When someone is writing for a blog he /she is write a post, when someone is creating a website he/she is creating pages. He/she will never say ‘I’m writing a post’, he he/she will say: ‘I’m creating a webpage’.

[anonymous] okay, thank you for the clarification! I think I just have to try it and see how it works.