Publishing with Custom Templates

Custom templates allow you to generate programmatic content and download each page as a file. The files can be whatever you want, from Markdown to HTML, or even plain text.
If you want to use PageFactory to create content for a Website that isn't run with Wordpress, you can use Custom templates to generate the content, download it, and then copy it over to your website.

Step 1: Create a Template

Login to PageFactory, and click "New Template" in the left hand sidebar. Choose the template type "Custom", and click the "Create" button. You'll be taken to the template editor.

create custom template


Step 2: Add Spreadsheet Column Names to PageFactory

Click the "Settings" tab. Enter the name of each spreadsheet column that should be accessed in the template. These will be used as placeholders (aka "variables") in your template. Make sure the column name in the spreadsheet is an exact match of what you enter here!
Example spreadsheet:

bird data spreadsheet

How these columns would appear in PageFactory:

bird fact variables


Step 3: Build Your Content Template

Return to the template editor by clicking the "Template" tab. Begin creating a template for your content in the Template field.
Click the green plus sign in the editor to access your spreadsheet data. When PageFactory builds your pages, the spreadsheet column names will be replaced with data from the spreadsheet.

bird facts template populated


Step 5: Fill Out the Settings Fields

Custom templates only have one settings field, File Name. You'll notice it has a green plus sign above it. Just like the template editor, clicking the green plus sign will allow you to add spreadsheet column names to that field.

custom file name


This is important because the name of each file that is generated must be unique, otherwise they will get overwritten. Use spreadsheet data to ensure that the name generated for each file is unique.

Step 6: Generate and Download Content

Click the "Publish" tab, and choose the spreadsheet you want to apply to your template in the CSV File field. Note: The spreadsheet must be saved in CSV format and can not be bigger than 50 MB.
Click the Publish button and PageFactory will begin creating your content. Once it's done, a download link will appear on the publish page. The link will be valid for 24 hours.

publish wait message


During publishing, you can refresh the page to check the status of your publish. Most of the time, this shouldn't take more than a minute. But if you're processing a lot of data, it could take a few minutes.