Textpattern CMS

#1 2006-06-29 17:33:33

indomitable

New Member

Registered: 2006-06-29

Posts: 2

School Intranet advice

I am about to start work at a new secondary school here in the UK and one of the jobs they wish me to undertake is a regeneration of their intranet.

I have been put off running a wiki for fear of students creating new pages of unsuitable content and it taking time and effort to constantly keep it “clean”. I need access for multiple authors (from different departments) and TXP seems ideal from what I have seen so far.

I have some completely newbie questions though, mainly to do with structure, before we commit ourselves to building this with Textpattern. I hope someone can help.

The idea is to have broad areas of the site such as Academic Subjects, Extra-Curricular, Sport, Music. Each of these would have sub-areas. For instance Academic Subjects would have an area for Physics and it would contain a bunch of pages written by the Physics Dept. Should the top level be “sections” and the lower ones “categories”? Would I have a set of “categories” for the subjects within a “section” for all the academic stuff?

If the above is right could I have an index page for the category physics within Academic Subjects which contained an automatically generated list of the articles labelled with that category? I’m assuming so.

What exactly is the relationship between Pages and Articles? Would a member of the Physics department create a new page when they wanted something new or simply add an article to another page? Hmmm.

Sorry if these are incredbly basic questions but it is the terminology which confuses me, even after 6 years of running a blog!

Thanks in advance

#2 2006-06-29 18:39:16

NyteOwl

Member

From: Nova Scotia, Canada

Registered: 2005-09-24

Posts: 539

Re: School Intranet advice

Your broad areas would be candidates for sections, and the subjects candidates for categories.

Yes, you could have a page for a particular category that contained only articles in that category.

Think of a page as the structural framework that holds the content – the articles and any additional material wou wish to include. In some blog systems a page might be considered a template.

Now, did I further muddy the waters or is it now “through a glass darkly” :)

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Obsolescence is just a lack of imagination. / 36-bits Forever! / #include <disclaimer.h>;

#3 2006-06-29 18:53:12

indomitable

New Member

Registered: 2006-06-29

Posts: 2

Re: School Intranet advice

Much better thank you.

Didn’t want to start work only to have to rebuild it again from scratch when I realise it wouldn’t work like that!