Clone Pages

Clone pages are web pages with identical content that appear multiple times throughout your website. To prevent you from having to update the same content in more than one place, Govstack offers two options to create clone pages. One option uses outbound links, and the other uses reusable components.

Cloned pages with outbound links

Outbound links create a hyperlink in your content tree. Rather than having multiple instances of the same page, you can use outbound links to point back to a single content page. Outbound menu links that are added to the content tree will be included in the sub navigation at the side of web pages as well as in the menu manager and the sitemap component. 

To create a clone page with an outbound link, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the 'Content' section in Govstack’s back office. Your user account will need permission to create new nodes.
2. Right click the parent node that will contain your outbound link. Note that you can't create outbound links for your main navigation menus under the 'Home' node. They will need to be nested at least one menu level down.
3. Select 'Create'
4. Select 'Outbound Link'
5. At the top of the new link, in the 'Enter a name' field, add the name of the outbound link. This should match the name of the destination clone page. For example, if your destination page is 'Animal Services' the name of the outbound link should also be 'Animal Services'
6. Enter the target URL address for the cloned page in the 'External URL' field. To locate this link from the back office, follow these steps:
   1. Open a new instance of the back office in a separate browser tab
   2. In the content tree navigate to the target page containing the cloned content
   3. Confirm that the page has been published. If not, publish the page
   4. Open the info tab at the top right of the page
   5. Open the live version of the page using the URL under the 'Links' section
   6. Copy the URL address found in the browser address bar, including the https://
   7. Paste the resulting URL address into the 'External URL' field of the outbound link dialogue
7. Set the 'Open in New Tab' slider as required. For most clone pages it should be off
8. Select 'Save and Publish' to complete the process

Repeat these step for each location in your website that should link to the clone page.

Pro tips

Here are some pro tips to remember when creating clone pages using outbound links:

• If you are creating an outbound menu link to combine pre-existing pages into a single clone page, you'll need to decide which of your page instances should be the actual content page. Move your content to that webpage and delete all other instances of the page, noting where the original clones were in the website menu so that you can create outbound links in their place.
• You can't create outbound links for your main navigation menus under the 'Home' node. They will need to be nested at least one menu level down.
• Outbound links don't appear in subpage listings (page directories).
• Govstack will automatically update the destination of outbound menu links. If the target page or the outbound link itself are moved in the site structure the links will continue to function normally. Note that the actual URL referenced in the outbound link will not change. Changes in the site structure are kept track of behind the scenes by Govstack.

Cloned pages with reusable components

To create a clone page with reusable components, you first need to create and publish a reusable component containing the content for your cloned page. If the content already exists on a page in your website you can copy it directly to the reusable component by using the 'Copy main content' option found under the '...' menu on the left side of the 'Main content' section of the page.

Once the correct content has been added into the reusable component, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the 'Content' section in Govstack’s back office
2. Select the page you want to convert to a clone page
3. Delete any content on the clone page. You can use the 'Remove all items' option found under the '...' menu on the left side of the 'Main content' section of the page
4. Select 'Add content'
5. Choose 'Reusable Component' from the component list
6. Select 'Add' in the reusable components dialogue
7. Select the target content from the list of reusable components and click 'Submit'
8. Select the 'Create' button
9. Select 'Save and Publish' to complete the process

Repeat these steps for each clone page on the site.

Pro tips

Here are some pro tips for creating clone pages with reusable components:

• To create clone pages using reusable components, you'll need to make sure that page editors have access to the global node to edit page the content
• To update content on clone pages in the future, you'll need to edit the reusable component found in the global node

If we set up the website for you, we may have already created clone pages using reusable components. There are two ways you can check:

• If you open the 'Reusable Component' node found under 'Global' and you see items there that share the names of pages on your site, this work may already be done for you.
• Navigate to the individual clone pages to see if content has been added using reusable components. 

Should I choose an outbound link or reusable component?

Outbound links will move site visitors to a central content page, acting as a redirect. This may not be desirable in some cases. If you wish to have individual pages for each clone, rather than a redirect, you will need to use the reusable component option instead.