Home → How Do I... →

Include page from another site

• Edit

webteam

Feb 08, 2016 @ 10:54 PM

We have several related sites in Cascade. One site currently has a news folder with many pages of our news content. We would like to place a checkbox on this content type that allows users to select which other sites should also pull this information in.

It's easy to make a block that has all the data from those pages but is it possible using Cascade to create pages on the other sites that contain the data as well?

1. 1 Posted by Ryan Griffith on Feb 09, 2016 @ 01:28 PM

   

   Hi,

   To clarify, you would like to add a checkbox to your news articles that would dictate if the article should be included within other Sites, or only the Site containing the news folder? If so, you can accomplish this by:

   • Using either a Content Type Index Block, or the Query API, to pull in the data for all of the news
   • Create a Format that loops over the articles looking for the ones that have the checkbox checked, and if so display it

   If you choose to go the Index Block route, you would attach both the block and format to the pages within your other Sites. If you go the Query API route, you would attach just the Format to the pages within your other Sites; you will also need to make sure you use searchAcrossAllSites() when building the query to ensure your news are picked up from the other Sites.

   Please let me know if you have any questions.

   Thanks!

   • Edit

2. 2 Posted by webteam on Feb 09, 2016 @ 01:37 PM

   

   Your clarification is exactly correct.

   Just to make sure I'm understanding this correctly, by using either method above we could then create our news on site1.com. Our users could go to site1.com/news-article-example.html and if we used the above methods we could also go to site2.com/news-article-example.html as well? Would our content folks only need to publish the news article on site1 & do nothing else?

   • Edit

3. 3 Posted by Ryan Griffith on Feb 09, 2016 @ 01:53 PM

   

   Hi,

   My apologies for the confusion. With the setup I described, you would have one central location for news (**site1.com**) and your other sites (**site2.com**) would aggregate and link those articles located in site1.com.

   Please let me know if you have any questions.

   Thanks!

   • Edit

4. 4 Posted by webteam on Feb 09, 2016 @ 02:01 PM

   

   I should have specified my question more clear. So if I understand correctly, using just Cascade's features we can't have the same page live on site1.com & site2.com? The link on site2.com would just redirect them to the page on site1.com?

   I have other ways of accomplishing this using XML feeds & either JS or server side code. I was just curious if Cascade had a better method.

   • Edit

5. 5 Posted by Ryan Griffith on Feb 09, 2016 @ 02:17 PM

   

   Hi,

   Correct, there would be no out-of-the-box way to create a clone of a page within site1.com with the page's data, but in the design/layout of site2.com.

   The only ways I can think of accomplishing this would be to:

   • Create a corresponding page within site2.com, but that page's data definition has a chooser in which the original article is selected. You would have a Format that uses the chosen page and outputs its data
   • Use Web Services to read the articles from site1.com and create a corresponding page within site2.com.

   Either method could possibly result in incorrect content in the other sites unless you regularly "re-sync" the pages to ensure the clones have any updated content.

   If you don't mind me asking, could you explain your use case a bit more for having the same page in two different sites? Generally, clients opt for a central news location for consistency in message and branding.

   Thanks!

   • Edit

6. 6 Posted by webteam on Feb 09, 2016 @ 02:38 PM

   

   We have two main companies, each with their own website, branding & identity. We also have additional websites for our retirees, for members of our cooperative, an intranet for our internal employees. As well as digital signage across our locations & other sources I'm probably forgetting where we want our news to display. We are trying to slowly move to the idea of COPE (Create Once, Publish Everywhere). The main idea here is to allow our content writers to create the content, specify what type of content it is & who might be interested in it. Then any other source, be it a website, an app, digital signage or anything else, can pull relevant content & display it in its own format.

   The original posted question is a baby step towards this philosophy.

   • Edit

7. 7 Posted by Ryan Griffith on Feb 09, 2016 @ 02:45 PM

   

   Ah, that makes sense then.

   In that case, publishing to a single data source like an XML/JSON file or database might be the most flexible. Or, perhaps a combination of solutions depending on the use case.

   For example, depending on how your signage works, you could end up having a "signage" output that has a specific look and publishes to a specific location. Or if you signage can pull in an XML file, you could go with what you mentioned previously.

   Please let me know if you have any questions.

   Thanks!

   • Edit

8. 8 Posted by webteam on Feb 09, 2016 @ 02:49 PM

   

   Will do. Thank you as always for your awesome support!

   • Edit

9. webteam closed this discussion on Feb 09, 2016 @ 02:49 PM.