Pageflow stories consist of chapters and sections that form the main path through your story. With excursions, you can provide additional, in-depth content that exists outside of this main path. Excursions open in a separate layer above the main content and can be accessed by readers as needed – without interrupting the reading flow of the main story.

This is more lightweight than linking to separate stories: You don't need to maintain multiple stories, and readers automatically return to their original position in the story after closing the excursion.

Here you can see a demo story that uses excursions and presents three buildings to choose from. Clicking on one of the buildings opens an excursion with additional information.

You can try the demo yourself and see the excursion feature in action.

How do excursions work?

Excursions work technically just like chapters: They contain sections in which you can use all the elements you would use in regular sections. The difference lies in the presentation: Instead of being part of the linear main path, an excursion opens in a separate layer above the main content.

Readers can close an excursion in two ways:

  • With the close button (×) in the top right – available at any time
  • With the back button at the end of the excursion – appears after scrolling through completely

After closing, readers automatically return to the position where they opened the excursion.

Create an excursion

In the editor, you'll find excursions in the outline on a separate tab:

  1. Open the Outline in the sidebar
  2. Switch to the Excursions tab
  3. Click on New Excursion
  4. Add sections and fill them with content – just like with regular chapters

Outline with Excursions tab and button to create a new excursion

A newly created excursion is not visible by itself – you need to link to it from somewhere in the story so readers can access it.

Link to an excursion

To make an excursion accessible to your readers, you link to it from a location in the main story. You can use various linking elements for this:

  • Teaser list – Display multiple excursions as an overview
  • Hotspots – Place clickable points on images or videos
  • Text links – Link inline from within text

To link to an excursion:

  1. Add one of the linking elements mentioned above to a section
  2. Open the element's settings and click on Select link destination
  3. Switch to the Excursions tab in the dialog
  4. Select the desired excursion or a specific section within the excursion

Link target dialog with Excursions tab to select an excursion as link target

Customize the back button

The back button at the end of an excursion displays the text "Exit excursion" by default. You can adapt this text to match the content context, for example to "Back to overview" or "Continue in main story".

Customized back button with text 'Back to overview'

To change the button text:

  1. Open the Excursions tab in the outline
  2. Click on the excursion title to open the excursion settings
  3. Enter your desired text in the Back button text field

Click on excursion title in the outline Back button text field in excursion settings