[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
if you know anything about me you know
that the pen stack is my all-time
favorite stack it's just so versatile
and a true pleasure to
use what is the pen stack
first off it's a part of the starter
pack by Weaver space and is completely
free again it's my favorite and most
used stack I have in my stacks
toolbox the pen stack at its core is a
stack to help you organize your project
by grouping Stacks together and take
notes for your project
files but it can do so much more the pen
stack can allow you to make your project
files look super clean and allow you to
work on your projects efficiently
at first glance the pen stack doesn't
look like much well you shouldn't judge
a stack on its settings right out of the
box the stack can look pretty simple but
that can easily be changed here are just
a few examples of what the pen stack can
look like you can change the color of
the pens you can add emojis and write up
notes about whatever section you're
working on you can see that you can use
markdown within the text area as well as
HTML you can choose to show and hide
specific features of the
pens it's super easy to start getting
the pen stack to look like you want it
to there are some built-in options for
colors to add some flare to your
pens the markdown text editor allows you
to make the text content organized how
you'd like
let me show you some of the more
advanced ways you can make your pen
stack stand out from the rest here I
have a standard pen without anything
changed I'm going to add a Swatch
palette to the page and add a background
Swatch to it I'll give my background
Swatch a class of pen gradient 01 and do
the same for the pen in the note class
setting
now within my background Swatch I'll
select CSS under background
Styles you'll notice the background of
the pen instantly updates and my
gradient is now
showing I can add some text by double
clicking in the notes section of the pen
and then change the text to use the
light
version you can also do this by clicking
note color and then custom and setting
the text color there
you can use HTML within the pen to
render layouts that can make your pens
look super extra I have this page over
here where I have a couple of layouts I
made they use the macros I include in
all of my stacks project files for the
site title site URL and the site logo
I use swatches to create these layouts
which means you would need to include
those swatches everywhere you wanted the
pen to look the way you want or you
could use inline CSS and add the
settings to the code yourself and the
pens could just be
Standalone but you can see how you can
add in some really useful info and
content into the pen stack to make them
more aesthetically appealing while in
edit mode the total and easy CMS macros
don't dynamically work in edit mode like
they do in preview but they do allow you
to quickly add info from the admin side
to a pan when adding the HTML
layouts once we have the layouts the way
we want them all we need to do is
preview them in a browser and use the
browser inspector to view the
code we then copy and paste the code
from the browser into our pen
now we have our HTML layout in the pen
so we can view it while in edit
mode now that you've seen what the pen
stack can look like let me show you the
best features of the pen stack the pen
stack is fantastic for helping you
figure out issues you're having with
your pages within your project files the
last couple of settings down here are
pretty awesome and simple by Design if
you toggle on the do not publish setting
whatever is in your pen stack won't
publish nor will it preview this is
fantastic for complex pages with lots of
sections there may be one setting
somewhere that is messing up the whole
page and by systematically going through
and turning off and on pen Stacks you'll
be able to figure out where the problem
content is this method of trial and
error has saved me so much time and
frustration once I find the problem I
can then take it over to my sandbox and
work on it to make sure there's nothing
funky going on with it once I know the
content within the pen is good to go I
can simply copy it back into my page and
check to make sure it's working as
expected hopefully this gave you some
insight as to what the pen stack is capable of