You may notice that there are two blocks for displaying pages: "Auto-nav" and "Page List". In simple terms, the difference between the two is that Auto-nav ONLY displays links to a page and is intended for building menus across your site. On the other hand, Page List is what it sounds like - displays a list of pages, but with additional information.

Page List is useful if you have a whole bunch of pages that share something in common. For example, take a look at a website of mine (built with Concrete), in one of the directory categories:http://cmsguide.info/guide/directory/wiki/...

It was very simple to do: I used a custom page type (that I set up via the dashboard), and set the Page List block to display only the pages beneath that specific page ("beneath this page").

The Page List block also allows you to filter pages that have a certain page attribute enabled (ex. "featured").

If you want, I could make a short tutorial video on how to use it.

Sorry Brad, didn't see you'd answered this before I hit post!

I think it's important to learn the purpose of the Page List block and the Autonav block together, as then you know when to use which one.

With concrete5 sites, you have pages in a sitemap, a tree structure. The sitemap defines the nesting and order of the pages.

Then each page has a 'Type'. General content pages are really all just given the page type 'Page', but you can have more specific page types like 'Blog Post', 'Product', 'Event', etc.

So first of all, the Autonav block is designed to output links to pages based on the sitemap structure and ordering. If you want to list links at a certain level of your sitemap, outputting them at the order as defined in the sitemap, you use this block. It's also the block you'd use if you wanted to build some sort of menu drop down system.

On the other hand, the Page List block only _lists_ pages, it doesn't really care about the sitemap structure. You can then decide what order you output the page list, such as ordering it based on when the page was created, or alphabetical.
You can also use it to output a list of page of only one particular page type.

So for example, you could use it to output a list of 'Blog Post' page types only, ordered by the publish date. If you limited the output to say something like 4, this then gives you the perfect block to summarise your latest blog posts, for somewhere like your home page or a sidebar.

The page list also allows you to output things like descriptions against each page, provide some 'pagination' buttons.

So:
- Use the page list block when you want to list pages of a particular type and sort them in a particular order, and perhaps want to include things like descriptions and other details about the pages. It's a list of pages.

- Use the autonav block when you really just want to output links for navigation, to reflect the structure of your site's sitemap.

Thank you so much Brad and Mesuva. I still need to study what Mesuva wrote, but just wanted to say thanks for the help. And a video tutorial would be awesome Brad! I can't believe that no one has done it yet. At least none that I've found...

Thanks again for your explanations. I am still at a loss, though, as to how to use Page List.

For instance, if I want to create a Page List Block on the Home page that is connected to the latest blog on the Blog page - how do I do it? I've created a Page List Block on the Home page, but I don't know how to connect it to the latest blog on the Blog page.

Help please?

When adding the page list block, do the following:

1. Select the page type that you're using for the blog posts (if you aren't sure, go to one of those pages and see what is selected for the "design" option in page properties). Generally, it is "Blog Entry" or ProBlog Post, depending on what you're using.

2. Under "Filter", make sure "Display page aliases" is checked. Check any other filter options as you see fit.

3. If you have a lot of pages, you may want to check the Pagination option.

4. Select "beneath another page". Then, select the main Blog page.

5. From there, the other options are pretty straight forward.

I hope that helps?

Thank You GrowthCurve (Brad?),

There is something that is still not working quite right. Let me show you what I am trying to achieve - if you click the following link you will see a page demonstrating a Grid Blog Page List. This is what I am hoping to achieve on my website:
http://foundation.formigo.co.uk/blog/grid-blog-page-list/...

Is it be possible to explain to me how to do that?

Thanks again!

Ok, I see now that the problem I was having was with the description in the blog summary block. Now I know that I have to set the page description (on the blog page) in the Properties panel with the Page name.

Thanks again for your help.

Brad,

Could I ask for your help again? I like what you did in the link you provided above and was wondering if you could help me achieve the same results.

I've attached a screenshot of what I got so far. Not quite the same as your example. LOL.

Thanks for any help.

Did you manage to do it Tribble and if so how?