Orchestra website / advice on a complex CCK content type

This will be easier to do in the future, but for now it's a bit of a pain.

Do I have to define my own field types to do this? Short answer is no, but you might want to.

Are there composite types? Technically, all fields can be made composite fields on output. When a field is added in views, the output of the field can be rewritten to include the content of another field. Check the 'Rewrite the output of this field' box and you can add any field listed above the field you are editing.

Any other suggestions? And this is where I explain myself. It is easy to have a field that receives multiple values. It is also easy to combine multiple fields into one when creating a view. It is hard to do both at the same time. There is a module called multigroup that will do exactly what you want, but it's under development. Right now it's part of CCK 3.x-dev. #494100: State of the multigroup module

To be honest, I wouldn't rely on multigroup. It's been in limbo for a while and isn't moving forward like the rest of CCK is. (It's not dead, just slow.) You can simulate the appearance of multigroup using the panels module. Just put the fields you want to appear grouped together into adjacent columns. The downside to this approach is that if the value of a field exceeds the width of the column, the whole effect breaks down.

Currently, if you want to combine fields, have multiple values for the group, and you are concerned about appearance, you have to create your own field type. (As well as field handlers for views and so on.)

As for your last question, there are Drupal based orchestra websites. I can't point you to any good examples though. (Hard to find them since there is a company called Orchestra building Drupal sites.)

As someone who is also dealing with complex CCK content types, I wish you the best of luck.

You can use flexi field for composite fields.

Thanks for your ideas. I think the conclusion is, there's nothing stable and tested to support composite CCK types yet.

I've thought a bit about this issue, and I think I'm going to move away from a rigorous data model and simply put the information in one single text field. This will probably make the interface easier to use and also will be more flexible. I'll probably lose the ability to display a list of works played, but never mind, it was just an idea anyway.

By the way, is there a way to have templates for newly created nodes? This way it would be easy for the authors to stick to an agreed format.

cheers
Hendrik