Create a 'Page' Template?

rjwilner

I think I probably know the answer to this, but because I'm new to SM, it's certainly possible I've overlooked how/where it's done....

I would really like to create a photoblog inside SM, and have been perusing the 'How To....' in the SmugMug School\SM Tips article on how that's done. And that workflow for creating posts would work just fine for my needs.
But that whole workflow of having to add the exact same content blocks to a new 'post' for each and everyone I wish to create is going to get tedious quick. And it would be great if we could create/save a page 'template' of sorts that would store all those same content blocks. And each time we wished to create a new post, we could have a list of available page 'templates' as one more 'Create' option.

Is that at all possible currently, or should I submit it as a feature request?

Thanks!

rainforest1155

Hi there,
There's currently not an option to create page templates. Each page created is blank by default and you would add your desired content blocks to it.
That said, if you contact us Heroes on the HelpDesk with a link to a page, we'd be able to clone the page for you. Just let us know how many times you need the page cloned.

All the best,

rjwilner

@rainforest1155 said:
Hi there,
There's currently not an option to create page templates. Each page created is blank by default and you would add your desired content blocks to it.
That said, if you contact us Heroes on the HelpDesk with a link to a page, we'd be able to clone the page for you. Just let us know how many times you need the page cloned.

All the best,

I certainly appreciate the offer to clone a page for me (hard not to appreciate that level of service offered). But I think I'll be wanting to do this on a regularly irregular basis moving forward, so I don't want to keep coming back and asking for more clones.

And I believe I've figured out an alternative approach that will allow me to accomplish the desired result.

Thanks again for the kind offer!

kbevphoto

Not sure I am fully understanding this, but couldn't you use a version of a journal gallery for each post and just create a new one for each entry? you could also just clone the page template 20 times and make them "unlisted". This way you'd just have to flip the switch to "live" when you have a new entry. Could that work? This way the Smug elves could clone a big batch and you could hide them until you're ready.

rjwilner

@kbevphoto said:
Not sure I am fully understanding this, but couldn't you use a version of a journal gallery for each post and just create a new one for each entry? you could also just clone the page template 20 times and make them "unlisted". This way you'd just have to flip the switch to "live" when you have a new entry. Could that work? This way the Smug elves could clone a big batch and you could hide them until you're ready.

That would probably work fine for some. Not for what I have in mind.

David_S85

I tried setting up a blog some years ago with SM Pages. It was a cut and paste job, at minimum, but it would have worked if I really pursued the project more. Each new page would receive the same basic CSS code, but the HTML linking would need to be constantly updated on subsequent pages and added to every earlier page to remain consistent. I liked the look and feel, but not the time involved.

I would welcome a blog addition to Smugmug.

rjwilner

I got to thinking about this yesterday and am wondering....For galleries, we have the ability to create 'Quick Settings' so that each time a new gallery is created, we can select a pre-defined 'Quick Setting' to acquire all the same parameters for the new gallery that have been utilized previously.

Would it not be feasible to utilize a siimilar 'Quick Settings' concept and apply it to other areas of our SM sites. For example, if we could create Quick Settings for a 'Page' object, we could set up the page with whatever content blocks we wished, save it as a Quick Setting and then select a Quick Setting each time we create a new Page. That would save a bunch of time for those of us who would prefer to keep our blogging activities within the SM framework.

And if we take that idea a step further, could there not be Quick Settings options available for the various 'Content Blocks' that may be incorporated on to a page? Probably not all would need that done, but there are at least a few that would probably be worthy.

denisegoldberg

@rjwilner said:
Would it not be feasible to utilize a siimilar 'Quick Settings' concept and apply it to other areas of our SM sites. For example, if we could create Quick Settings for a 'Page' object, we could set up the page with whatever content blocks we wished, save it as a Quick Setting and then select a Quick Setting each time we create a new Page. That would save a bunch of time for those of us who would prefer to keep our blogging activities within the SM framework.

And if we take that idea a step further, could there not be Quick Settings options available for the various 'Content Blocks' that may be incorporated on to a page? Probably not all would need that done, but there are at least a few that would probably be worthy.

You might want to log this as a feature request.
https://dgrin.com/categories/smugmug-feature-requests