Sections, Sub-Sections?

rahul · 2006-01-14 02:30:05

Dear All:

I’m trying to make a site, which has a three-level hierachy – like so:

x-Home
xx-About
xxx-A Day at CFL
xxx-Getting Here
xx-Education
xx-Funding

[—more stuff—]

My questions is – how do I configure it, so that the About section, can have sub-sections within it? Is it even possible? Why would I want to do it this way?

1. Breadcrumbs
2. Manageability
3. General…neatness :-P

My current site, is here. (Pls. note – it’s table-built – along with converting to TXP, I’m also moving to xHTML/CSS).

http://cfledu.org/

Thanks in advance,
Rahul.

nardo · 2006-01-14 04:23:29

from your example, it looks like you might only need two levels, if “Home”, “Education” and “Funding” are all top level sections (what you’d put on a navigation bar at the top of each page, for example)

in Textpattern your ‘home’ page is a special type of ‘section’ – and other sections don’t have to be nested within it

anyway, you have two options -

use categories for “A Day at CDL”, “Getting Here”, etc – and post one or multiple articles within that category with the caveat that currently it can be a little tricky generating nav lists from categories, if you need a high level of control
make “A Day at CDL”, “Getting Here”, etc each an article within section “About” – see this post and this one

a good way of working through these issues is to get Txp working on localhost on your computer – set up two Txp sites (to test the approaches above), add a bit of content, and try to get the architecture and functionality you want without worrying about the styling/design

another recommendation is not to let the wealth of plugins blind you from the built-in tags – usually you can achieve most of what you want with the core Txp code, with a handful of plugins to handle specific tasks (like nav lists, sometimes)

nardo · 2006-01-14 04:32:30

I just had a look at your site, rahul – option 2 would probably be your best bet

and to outline in plain english how textpattern would do it:

you’ll write articles (e.g. “Getting Here”) which will be in a section (e.g. “About”)
when you’re in a section home page, you’ll ask Txp to only output “sticky articles” onto that page, plus a list (sub nav) of all other “live” articles in that section
when you click an item on the sub nav, you’ll be going to an individual article page

easier to do it, than to write it out!

blumie607 · 2006-01-14 05:21:18

For site with more articles, though, sub-sections would be a great feature. Hopefully we see them soon…

goncalo.dumas · 2006-01-14 12:28:27

nardo wrote:
(…) another recommendation is not to let the wealth of plugins blind you from the built-in tags (…)

Maybe I’m getting out of the original context of this post, but I couldn’t help noticing that this was one of my early problems in textpattern: How to organize articles within a section.

I think there is no need for theorical explanation, I think we all understand this taxonomy (erh), but the practical approach is not that clear.

I’ve filled this gat using one nice pluging called mdp_sectionmenu (http://outoverthevoid.com/projects/11/section-menu) witch gives us a good grip on the issue.

But I was left thinking: How do I manage this section/article thing without using a plugin… just by using plain textpattern tags.

nardo · 2006-01-14 14:26:31

you have sticky and live articles to play with, as well as a lot of options in the sortby attribute – making section-level menus is more restrictive unless you use plugins… because it’s rare you want to sort sections alphabetically (ako_nav makes hand-coded section menus easy)

goncalo.dumas · 2006-01-14 19:29:20

In the meantime I deactivated the mdp_sectionmenu and hand coded some simple <code><a></code> tags on the sidebar that would replace (I thought) the plugin’s functions… but it worked! :o|

What are the pros and cons of doing such a thing?

Basically, I copied what was in documentation page of the ako_nav plugin (http://www.ako-k.com/archive/108)… witch it goes like this:

<code><div>
<h2>Navigation</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href=”/”>home</a></li>
<li><a href=”/about”>about</a></li>
<li><a href=”/contact”>contact</a></li>
</ul>
</div></code>

Last edited by patchwork (2006-01-14 19:30:47)

nardo · 2006-01-14 23:59:45

ako_nav gives you an ‘active’ class on the currently browsed section – handy

see this weblog post – hand-coded but with certain benefits (e.g. should you change your permanent link scheme, or the human-readable title of a section)

often your sections don’t change much, so the hand-tailored approach is sustainable – it’s different if you want to be able to add sections regularly (or over time) and have your navigation menus update automatically; maybe you have lots of sections (for product categories etc)

goncalo.dumas · 2006-01-18 23:01:19

As I went copying the textpattern tags from the Textbook’s Alphabetical Tag Listing, I noticed the Txp:output form / ability to output… you guessed it, a form.

So, in order to centralize my menu’s links, I created a form named something_menu that holds all the HTML/textile and in each section page I just have to add the tag <code><txp:output_form form=“something_menu” /></code>

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#1 2006-01-14 02:30:05

Sections, Sub-Sections?

#2 2006-01-14 04:23:29

Re: Sections, Sub-Sections?

#3 2006-01-14 04:32:30

Re: Sections, Sub-Sections?

#4 2006-01-14 05:21:18

Re: Sections, Sub-Sections?

#5 2006-01-14 12:28:27

Re: Sections, Sub-Sections?

#6 2006-01-14 14:26:31

Re: Sections, Sub-Sections?

#7 2006-01-14 19:29:20

Re: Sections, Sub-Sections?

#8 2006-01-14 23:59:45

Re: Sections, Sub-Sections?

#9 2006-01-18 23:01:19

Re: Sections, Sub-Sections?

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