Martin–
As far as what the excerpt could be used for, I could see it being used in a number of other scenarios. For example, let’s say you create a widget for displaying recent pages. You could conceivably show the excerpt there, and then link to the full page. Or maybe you’re developing an application that pulls in content through the services. You could use the excerpt (or any other of the content properties, for that matter) to create a custom display of data.
Joel, are you saying that this won’t work?
<cfif page.hasExcerpt() and !cb.isPageView()>
#page.renderExcerpt()#
I have done this before myself, the only issue that I had with it was displaying all the pages without the page that is the index itself, which was easily gotten around with some trickery on my part.
Andrew–
Not knowing the context in which the first part of the IF is being executed, I can’t say. I don’t think it would if one is using pages with out-of-the-box ContentBox.
My point, though, is that if you are in the context of the page itself (which is what Martin is talking about), having the excerpt code simply won’t work, since you’ll always be in “page view”. There is no analog to the blog’s isIndexView(), so there’s no way to distinguish between an “excerpt” view and a “non-excerpt” view, since the url for both is ultimately the same.
One of the reasons I was against this to begin with, because I knew someone would do it this way.
The trickery lies in the theme/layout itself, you need to provide the logic to determine if the page is indeed the page that is displaying the excerpts or the full page, before displaying what you need to do.
So for example, if I create a page slug called page-list, then I could do this
<cfif page.hasExcerpt() and !cb.isPageView(“page-list”)>
Which will display all the excerpts except the current page, then you would need to do the same thing for the display full content, I know it is a small amount of work, but it is doable.
Joel
As far as what the excerpt could be used for, I could see it being used in a number of other scenarios. For example, let’s say you create a widget for displaying recent pages. You could conceivably show the excerpt there, and then link to the full page. Or maybe you’re developing an application that pulls in content through the services. You could use the excerpt (or any other of the content properties, for that matter) to create a custom display of data.
Yes, n-1 scenarios are possible a great plus for ContenBox. I would be happy to have the simplest one, the CMS-standard feature having a “short” and “long”-text, as described :-). My whole concept dealing with content relies on that.
cheers
And Martin, is there any reason you can’t create a widget to do this and grab them by a category? I assume that this content for these pages will differ to other pages, which means they should be categorized as well. If you would like a widget that does this let me know, but it isn’t hard to write.
Hi Martin–
Technically, it does have short and long text 
– it’s just that the current setup doesn’t facilitate your need out of the box in terms of rendering those.
Just so everyone’s clear, can you confirm that the following is what you’re trying to accomplish?
1.) I have a ContentBox page: http://myblog.com/pageA
2.) When I navigate to http://myblog.com/pageA, I want the visitor to see the page excerpt, along with a button to click to “Show Full Page” (or whatever the text would be)
3.) When the button is clicked, the page should refresh. It should have the same URL (http://myblog.com/pageA), but this time show the full content of the page
Is that correct?
If so, a follow-up question would be what happens if the person does 1-3, goes to pageB, and then navigates back to pageA? Would you want to show them the excerpt again (in other words, start over at #1)?
Hello Joel,
1.) I have a ContentBox page: http://myblog.com/pageA
2.) When I navigate to http://myblog.com/pageA, I want the visitor to see the page excerpt, along with a button to click to “Show Full Page” (or whatever the text would be)
3.) When the button is clicked, the page should refresh. It should have the same URL (http://myblog.com/pageA), but this time show the full content of the page.
Is that correct?
Absolutely right. I think, the URL should or even must change for the full page in terms of search engines and bookmarking.
If so, a follow-up question would be what happens if the person does 1-3, goes to pageB, and then navigates back to pageA? Would you want to show them the excerpt again (in other words, start over at #1)?
Yes, this makes sense to me. A excerpt would be the base.
Thanks!
Good Morning
This brings up a question, which i never asked but is in my mind for a long time: The pages section could have be the same organisation like the blog in terms by having a index and and a page view. To explain this, i have to use the term “article” instead of “page”. If the pages section is organised like the blog, we could have multiple articles on a page. This would be a great benefit. Sometimes it makes sense to have multiple and short articles instead of a big one. I know, that this is a big one, but maybe worthy to discuss for the future.
Cheers
I have an idea, which could solve this issue for now, but it needs maybe some changes in the backend.
Let’s say that we have an page listening to the slug http://www.mysite.com/MyPage.
If we could set a standard, that any full page will be available at http://www.mysite.com/MyPage/FullPage, everything would be fine.
Cheers
Martin,
A little background on this. I added the page excerpt in order to provide a way to do summaries of pages or excerpts so it can be used dynamically by widgets or whatever called it. It cannot follow the paradigm of a blog because it is not a blog. So I don’t think it should follow a convention of index → entry.
I would say this topic would have to be implemented by the developer so they can provide the best approach to their CMS project instead of dictating something, which in case of a blog is natural. It is not really natural for a page to follow the same paradigm since the URL dictates the more in case of a blog.
Luis F. Majano
CEO
Ortus Solutions, Corp
www.ortussolutions.com
ColdBox Platform: http://www.coldbox.org
Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/3/731/483
Blog: http://www.luismajano.com
IECFUG Manager: http://www.iecfug.com
+infinity
Hello Luis
Thank you for the answer. As a more frontend related developer, i can’t really agree with you 
In terms of rich set of functionality and also from a marketing view of the CMS, this basic feature should be supported out of the box. That was one of the reasons, why i have requested it some time ago.
Experienced developers will always have the opportunity to create something special for their needs. Well known things, which we know from other CMS, should be integrated.
Personally, i have no chance to implement it by myself, i counted with a complete implementation, maybe my fault ;-(
Now i’m running out of time and i think this needs to go really deep under the hood of the engine to build something which could work.
Cheers
Martin,
Can you let me know how this is implemented in other CMS’s, because I really can’t find anything on this. Everything I find for other CMS’s is the same thing where a developer needs to come up with an approach to fulfill that requirement. Whether they decide to create a master page that lists all page excerpts and then they link to the full page. That seems to be the most natural approach I have seen.
So my question to you, is that what you are trying to do?
Luis F. Majano
CEO
Ortus Solutions, Corp
www.ortussolutions.com
ColdBox Platform: http://www.coldbox.org
Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/3/731/483
Blog: http://www.luismajano.com
IECFUG Manager: http://www.iecfug.com
Luis,
Depending the CMS we have several approaches. The most popular is, like the blog from ContentBox and as you described perfectly a minute ago:
Whether they decide to create a master page that lists all page excerpts and then they link to the full page. That seems to be the most natural approach I have seen.
Mura works like this, Contao, Joomla so far i remember too and some other local CMS i know. Please excuse, that i compare php based CMS with ContentBox, but they are our hardest to beat candidates
If ContentBox could make this evolution, it would be a great “thumbs up”. This concept would give us the feature to have more than one article per page nearly for free.
Cheers
Can you direct us to some docs on this in order to get a better idea.
Luis F. Majano
CEO
Ortus Solutions, Corp
www.ortussolutions.com
ColdBox Platform: http://www.coldbox.org
Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/3/731/483
Blog: http://www.luismajano.com
IECFUG Manager: http://www.iecfug.com
I’ll admit to not using Mura 6, but at least through Mura 5 there was no concept of having /my-cool-page-i-created/ that displays the excerpt and then /my-cool-page-i-created/fullContent that displays the whole content. On the contrary, Mura < 6 has the concept of a page excerpt, but it’s only used for creating widgets / modules that display the excerpts from a group of pages and gets embedded somewhere else. It’s very difficult for me to imagine that Mura 6 does anything so radically different.
I guess I cannot understand what you’re trying to achieve. Not only does what you’ve described seem very counter-intuitive from a usability standpoint, I have to believe that it would be an SEO nightmare, with dupe content penalties all over the place.
I’m with Luis. Please link us to documentation for these other CMS platform that describes the exact feature you’re referring to. I am very curious.
Okay, will do that including some live examples.
Thanks Martin,
Maybe I don’t see the immediate way to do it, but it does not mean our doors are closed on such things. However, I have to challenge everything in order to make sure that what we add core really can add value.
Thanks for helping out, we really appreciate your comments and feedback.
Luis F. Majano
CEO
Ortus Solutions, Corp
www.ortussolutions.com
ColdBox Platform: http://www.coldbox.org
Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/3/731/483
Blog: http://www.luismajano.com
IECFUG Manager: http://www.iecfug.com
I understand, i will do my best to provide good docs and samples. The only real problem i have now, that my concept how to run my sites is smashed for a while.
Cheers