Newbie feedback on how I'm going to build my site - Define content types vs. Taxonomy
Hi,
I'm a newbie to Drupal and I would appreciate some feedback on how I'm approaching the architecture of my site.
My site is pretty straightforward - I wireframed it prior to deciding on implementation. I defined a homepage layout and a simple two level page hierarchy. The first level is a "section". The section template has an introduction to the section and then a list of the child pages - "subsections" - with a teaser and optional photo for each "subsection". The "subsection" is a page with a breadcrumb indicating which "section" it belongs to, an optional set of events that are associated with the "subsection" and text that is associated with the "subsection"
I'm going to assign editing rights for each "section" to an author. These authors aren't technical - I want them to be able to create a "subsection" and have it included into their "section" with minimal effort on their part. Also, they should be able to create an "event" and have it included without any real knowledge of Drupal.
With my current level of knowledge of Drupal this is how I'm approaching this:
Homepage
1. Use panels to create a homepage layout
2. Use Views to bring content from sections/subsections and calendar to the front page
For sections/subsections - I see two different ways of approaching this:
Content-type approach:
1. Create two Content types : Section and Subsection
2. In Subsection defined a parent_fk field which references the parent Section
3. Create Views that provide a list of Subsections based off the current Section
4. Use custom breadcrumb module to auto generate breadcrumbs
Taxonomy approach:
1. All content is a page
2. Create a vocabulary representing sections
3. Create a type field that have two values : section/subsection
4. Create a section field that the user would have a selection from the vocabulary indicating the section the page belongs to
5. Breadcrumbs - not sure how to make this work - mostly cause I haven't researched it at this point.
I know there is more to either approach that I have to do to implement this. Both approaches seem to have their pros and cons - but I wanted to see if anyone has any input on how they would proceed with this and if I've going off the rails with either of these approaches.
Thanks in advance!
- X
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I'm not sure with drupal there's ever any 'right answer' to questions like this. Personally, I try to limit creating content types only to nodes that require different fields, and in some rare cases, different permissions (using content types is one simple core only way to do content create/update/delete permissioning). If it were me I'd probably use taxonomy and tac_lite or taxonomy_access to do this. You'll probably also want to look at the taxonomy_breadcrumb module as well.
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Thanks for your feedback -
Thanks for your feedback - that was the tipping point - I am moving forward with the taxonomy approach. In fact, I'm finding this much easier than the content type approach.
One question - with content types - you can create content specific templates - is there anything equivalent with taxonomy? That is, can you define a template specific to a term or vocabulary?
Thanks!
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If you mean the taxonomy list page you can customize that via views if you like. You can also create additional taxonomy based templates for node.tpl.php and page.tpl.php files. For more info see http://drupal.org/node/223440.
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Just in case someone stumbles
Just in case someone stumbles across this, I did something slightly different - I didn't use term page itself for the site visitor to see the aggregated content. Instead, I created a ContentType for the aggregration - then associated the aggregate type with the term. The reason for this was I wanted more support for adding teasers, full body, and custom fields. Also, I wanted a consistent experience for the authors. Editing a node vs. a term is a very different experience (I don't know why it has to be this way!). And I didn't want to get bogged down trying to explain the difference to the authors.
I then used panels node templates with a selector based off the contenttype to template out this aggregate page.
You might check composite
You might check composite instead of Panels. Easier, smaller footprint. If all you want is a new home page I would definitely suggest Composite.
Another new module! Phew!
It is exciting and demotivating at the same time when I find / hear about another module that is better that the one I am alreay using. I spent a few weeks learning Panels and Views and CCK. I am happy with them and would appreciate feedback from anyone: http://drupal.org/node/626216.
Now that you mentioned Composite, I can't help but check it out. Curiosity will burn me out!
Regards