Advice on Pages setup

[flimmer]

Hi

We have started to use Pages for normal articles. On our community we also have a separate system for "fishing fly database" built with PHP and just displayed using (a single) Pages. Users can add their own entries. This external database is relatively simple. It contain some basic data about a fly, a picture, in addition to 3 text-fields where in-depth information can be given (marked red).

Now, I think I want to to remove this PHP-application I built and rely only on the forum software and regular Pages. I understand I can create a Pages database and set up some fields for the basic data. But how should I do it with these three in-depth information fields. They should be part of the standard body of the entry in database. But this is important information that is mandatory to fill out by the user. I've tested with adding a editor field, but I do not know how I can get this displayed like I want to, sort of part of the main body. Is it possible to pre-fill a new entry in this Pages database with some example text and headers, kind of like a template? 

The reason I want to move to Pages, is I want to make our community as standard as possible, and not rely on any customizations, which sometimes is a bit of a problem when upgrading. Because I need to go in to templates and add some code to get my PHP application to show correctly. Therefore I probably do not want to use Pages with a lot of difficult customizations to that.

This should be easy enough to create as a regular Pages database for, right? Maybe just have some guidelines on how to add proper information if we cannot give them a template?

Thanks

[opentype]

16 minutes ago, flimmer said:

This should be easy enough to create as a regular Pages database for, right? Maybe just have some guidelines on how to add proper information if we cannot give them a template?

Yes, sounds like a perfect case for a Pages database. The custom fields you can set up in the ACP also come with a few layout options. Check the Display Option tab for the fields. For images, you probably want to create separate upload fields, not just rely on an editor field with attachments. 

The basics are explained here in the IPS Guides section:
https://invisioncommunity.com/4guides/suite-applications/pages/core-concepts/introduction-to-pages-r149/

For in-depth video instructions, you can check out the online video course in my signature. 

 

[flimmer]

Thanks, I will try to port this to Pages then 🙂 By the way, do we any kind of import routine or do I need to create something myself, for example use REST to move data from old app to Pages?

I also see I can add a Editor field, and even populate it with default value (even HTML) and therefore I can make "templates" for the user.

[Sonya*]

44 minutes ago, flimmer said:

By the way, do we any kind of import routine

There is only a built-in RSS Reed import into Pages.