Sectioning Advice

Ace of Dubs · 2006-05-28 00:52:46

So I am finally wrapping up the CSS design and digging into the forms of my first Txp site (how exciting!)

Basically the site will have pages for news, audio, photos, etc. etc. The home page will be composed of the most recent material posted from each section and will (hopefully) require zero maintenance.

I have set sections up for the various pages but now I am wondering if this is the best approach, as the custom article tags are somewhat limited in respect to outputting material from different sections. (especially with regards to CSS styling for ULs)

Would it be wiser for me to start from scratch and not have sections at all? Are categories the best way to accomplish this?

wet · 2006-05-28 08:13:58

On I similar topic, I suggested to give an individual id to the body element based on the section’s name. Thus, you can apply CSS selectors per section to every descending element.

Inlude this in your page template:

<body id="<txp:s />">
[...]

Asssuming two sections named “about” and “blog”, respectively, individual lists or list items can be styled with selectors along that line:

body#about ul li
body#blog ul
[...]

Gains: One stylesheet to rule them all.
You are right about the limitations of txp:article_custom with regard to sections. Maybe chh_article_custom is what you’re looking for.

Last edited by wet (2006-05-28 08:14:52)

Ace of Dubs · 2006-05-28 12:33:02

Thanks for the assist, wet. I already use body tags to put “you are here” indicators on my navigation. Never thought to style my lists this way. The only limitation here is that I use several list-styles in my design, so some manual fiddling is required. This chh plugin looks promising though. Will definitely give it a spin this afternoon.

Cheers

Ace of Dubs · 2006-05-28 12:33:49

PS – I am assuming by your answer that having one section for the entire site is not the best practice…

wet · 2006-05-28 13:15:45

I cannot speak of best practice as I even do not know if there is even one, but I can tell you more about my practice:

I am an old-fashioned guy and thus I still believe in Jakob Nielen’s mantra URL as UI. With that background it seems very natural for me to use the /section/article URL scheme to structure a site URL-wise. All other clean URL modes do not deliver such intuitive URL semantics, imho. First level navigation can be derived from sections, and so on. It looks plain natural to me.

Ace of Dubs · 2006-05-28 19:40:47

So I am tinkering with this plugin and so far it is pretty damn cool! I love how you can assign CSS classes directly to the wraptags and of course the multi-section listings are a breath of fresh air. There are just a few things I havent figured out…

1. Can this plugin show article excerpts from various sections?
2. Can I use this plugin to show thumbnails for the image gallery section?

Last edited by Ace of Dubs (2006-05-28 19:44:31)

Ace of Dubs · 2006-05-28 19:43:00

Another conundrum totally unrelated to this plugin…

Does anyone know of a way I can have an “Archive” section which will automatically feed off other sections?

Edit: Problem solved… rss-suparchive to the rescue here.. WilshireOne rules!

Last edited by Ace of Dubs (2006-05-28 23:56:17)

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#1 2006-05-28 00:52:46

Sectioning Advice

#2 2006-05-28 08:13:58

Re: Sectioning Advice

#3 2006-05-28 12:33:02

Re: Sectioning Advice

#4 2006-05-28 12:33:49

Re: Sectioning Advice

#5 2006-05-28 13:15:45

Re: Sectioning Advice

#6 2006-05-28 19:40:47

Re: Sectioning Advice

#7 2006-05-28 19:43:00

Re: Sectioning Advice

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