Automated lists, news and feeds

AEM has the ability to create listings of content that can be updated automatically on pages, without the need to publish the pages themselves that contain the lists.  

Lists can be configured to build items in a number of different ways

In addition to configuration options on how to create lists from the system, there are also a number of display options.  

There are also a few extensions of displays options that we've created and provide for use.

When to use a list

A list can be helpful in quite a few number of scenarios.  Here are just a few examples.

  • News articles
  • Landing page set-up to have links or call-outs to each child page
  • Newsletters with sections that display different articles

When NOT to use a list

It's important to note that lists do not have exclusion logic, so any content that meets the applicable criteria will display on your list.  Lists are also automatically ordered/sorted on the page and you do not have specific control over the order in which items appear.

  • If specific control over when items show up or remove themselves from lists are important a list may not be right for your situation.
  • If the ordering of how items appear on your page cannot be met by the ordering options available from a list, a list may not be right for your situation.

Ways to configure a list

Using the List component you may build a list using any one of the following options.

  • Child pages (pages that are built directly under a specified parent page).
  • Descendant pages (pages that exist at any level under a specified parent page).
  • Fixed list
  • Search*
  • Advanced Search*
  • Tags

*The search, and advanced search functions are not methods that Marketing & Brand Strategy have utilized.  Although they are available "out of the box" within AEM - they have not been used or tested for functionality.

The recommended configurations that we regularly utilize, are child pages and tags.

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Essential List set-up

We'll take a look at three of our most used list building configurations.  Tags, Child pages, and Fixed list.

Each configuration starts with a "List" component placed on the page, from the "BGSU" category.

The set-up of a list component will vary based on how the list build is specified.  But these basic fields in the List tab are important.

  • Display as*: One of these three display options must be selected
    • News: Display the page title, the on time, and the page description - all pulled from fields within a pages properties
    • Links: A simple bulleted-list linked display of page titles
    • Teasers: Display in 3-columns, the image, page title and description pulled from the page properties.
  • Order by: Selects how the lists results should be ordered
    • jcr:title: Alphabetical ordered by page title
    • jcr:created: Sorted chronologically when the page was created within AEM
    • cq:lastModified: Sort chronologically with the most recently modified page at the top
    • onTime: Sort chronologically based on the On Time set in page properties, with newest at the top.  This is the preferred setting for News articles.
  • Limit: Limit the list to a certain number of items
  • Paginate after: Add pagination to the results after a desired number of items

* indicates a required field that must be completed before the component will render properly on the page

list-component-tags

"Display As" options

News

Links

Teasers

Building list results

We'll take a look at three of our most used list building configurations.  Tags, Child pages, and Fixed list.

Each configuration starts with a "List" component placed on the page, from the "BGSU" category and set-up as previously described.

In order to create a list using Tags, the pages you want to pull-in must be tagged appropriately.

Tags must already exist in the AEM tag taxonomy.  There is already an extensive collection of tags, however tags are typically only applied to News stories published by Marketing and Brand Strategy.  For more information about tagging pages, please contact us for further CMS Training.

When configuring the list component for Tags, you'll want to select the "Tags" option from the "Built list using..." field.

list-component-tags

You should then automatically be taken to the "Tags" tab. 

  • Parent page: This is the page that you want the system to start looking for pages that match your tag search.  The system will crawl that page and all of it's descendents.  If you leave this blank, it will use the page that the list component is on as the parent page.
  • Tags/Keywords: You can either use the drop-down tag explorer to browse the tags that are part of the BGSU tagging taxonmy.  You can also start to type in a tag, and the system will auto-suggest tags that contain those words.  This is typically the easiest method.
  • Match: This drop-down determine the logic applied to your selected tags/keywords.  If "any tag" is selected, a page will appear if it is tagged with any of your selected tags. If "all tags" is selected, a page will appear only if it has every single tag that you've selected.
list-component-tags-tab
list-component-tags-autocomplete
  • Child Pages: This will build a list showing all pages that are not hidden from navigation and are the direct children of the parent page selected.
  • Descendent Pages: This will build a list showing all pages that are not hidden from navigation and are the descendents of any and all pages of the parent page.

When configuring the list component for either "Child Pages" or "Descendent Pages", a new tab will appear with a field for "Parent page".

  • Parent page: This is a page within AEM that the list component will start at as it finds matches for your list.

A Fixed List build allows you to manually select each and every page that you'd like to appear as a result.  This will not benefit from automatic updating and publishing of newer pages that meet your criteria.

Extended Display Options

These particular "extensions" to the default display options are built utilizing a "mid-bar" component with a special class name(s) and a properly configured list utilzing the "teasers" display option.

Featured Feed

The featured feed, will always show the top-most or first listing as a larger option that takes up approximately 3/4 of the mid-bar width.  The second listing will appear in the remaining 1/4 of the midbar.  If results extend beyond 2 listings all others will flow in rows of 3 after.

It is triggered by placing the

news-feature-feed

class name into the classes tab of a mid-bar component. Additionally, a properly configured list component set to display as teasers must be within the midbar component.

Updated: 05/15/2023 11:56AM