I have a situation where I have a set of procedures that are HTML pages. They are all related to eachother, so I want to automatically display on each page a list with links to the sibling procedures. There are new procedures being written all the time, so I don't want to have to maintain these links manually.
I've thought about using a menu in a design, but this would mean creating and maintaining a new design just for these pages.
I've also considered a nested asset listing, but I don't think I could prevent the current asset from displaying in the list.
Is there a best way to handle this kind of thing?
You can use a nested asset listing with a dynamic root node set to the current asset. You probably still want to use a design for these assets to make it easier to nest the asset listing.
Thanks, Greg. I'm not sure I fully understand how this would achieve a listing of sibling items… none of the pages I want the list to appear on are a root node.
Lets say we have:
Page A
|- Page B
|- Page C
|- Page D
|- Page E
What I want to be able to do is list pages C, D and E on page B, pages B, D and E on page C, etc. If possible, I don't want the current asset to be in the list.
I know I could also do this manually, but lets say we get up to page Z - that's a lot of pages to be maintaining lists on…
Would a dynamic root node get around this problem? I'm just not sure how it would work…
An asset listing with a dynamic root node would work to display sibling assets, but would also list the current asset. To ensure that the current asset is not linked, you'd need to use a menu design area (which would require a custom design) with self-referential links disabled.
However, once you've created this design, you could reuse it with any page that needed it.
I don't think there's a way though to exclude the current asset entirely unless you use some CSS to set its display: none; for the current asset.
True. Though, the menu area would at least highlight which page the viewer is currently on (as the menu may supress the link tag, but it still prints the asset name).
Can somebody tell me why using a dynamic root node displays that root node in the list? The root node should never be displayed in the list at all. That doesnt make any sense - child assets are listed under the root… Can this be confirmed?
If it is currently working like this, it should be fixed.
We're talking siblings, not root nodes, Greg. Take a look at the example:
Page A
|- Page B
|- Page C
|- Page D
|- Page E
To get this to work, you'd have to set the root node to Page A on Pages B, C, D, E – therefore, the current page would show itself. If you set the root node to the current page, how do you configure it to show siblings instead of children?
I still think a menu design area is the way to go: Make it generic, so it lists the current level (ie to print the sibling assets) and use the self_link=false setting to suppress the link for the current page.
Thanks Avi, Greg and Marcus. I suspected I'd need to use a menu, but in using this product and reading the forum it hasn't taken long to realise there's often some "trick" you can use instead of the most obvious solution. I'll give the menu option a go.