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#1 2008-02-14 11:09:26
- diniscorreia
- Member
- From: Lisbon, Portugal
- Registered: 2007-07-18
- Posts: 19
Portfolio with Textpattern, yet again - suggestions needed
Hi all,
I’m building a portfolio section on a Textpattern site for the design agency I work for. I need something very specific, and even tough I believe I’ve come with the best solution, I would love to have some tips on the subject.
Basically, there are several sections on the site – news, downloads, case studies, etc, etc. The portfolio would be a section, listed on the main nav. The tricky part: the portfolio is organized by client (there’s a sub nav with clients) and each client is divided into project types (web design, branding, etc). The contents to each project type only include images of the project. There is small paragraph with a description of the client that must appear on the top of the page of all the project types.
My idea is to have the portfolio as a section; to have clients listed on a subnav, I would used sticky articles – those articles would also be used for writing the small paragraph about the client. For each client, we would also have to add a new category, with the client’s name.
Each project type would be an article to which we would assign a category – the client’s name. I would also output the sticky article I mentioned on each of these project type pages.
So, is there a better way to do this? I am completely missing something? Or is this really the best way to go?
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Re: Portfolio with Textpattern, yet again - suggestions needed
I use a similar structure for my cartoons: a section, main image categories (clients, in your view), then single cartoons in the categories (the projects, in your case).
Any cartoon can have one or more paragraph. I do this without articles, only image organized by categories. I put up a bos_album plugin for this (it uses another plugin, bos_image_display, as a library), so it’s a one-tag job.
Pros: one-tag does it all; you don’t have to use articles;
Cons: you can’t have comments for the cartoons/projects; no clean urls for single cartoons;
I think there are also other approaches. Expecially, if you go for using articles, maybe the sticky articles aren’t needed: you may use categories for organizing clients (then articles for projects). Upm_category_image may be useful to display an image and a caption for the section page. I did it for a client, and it works well.
I hope this can help, it really depends on your needs and… well, taste. :)
Z-
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Re: Portfolio with Textpattern, yet again - suggestions needed
If there is only one project per client (e.g. each client is a project) and your project type content is only images, you could make each client an article which includes the client infos and use image categories for the project types. The sub-nav would then be a list of article titles with permalinks. There are various image gallery alternatives as zanza has suggested.
If you have more than one project for one client and would also like to browse the work according to project type, e.g. all web projects, all print projects etc. as well as by client, another option would be to make each project an article, allocate the project type as an article category and include the client as a custom field. When you want a list of projects by client, use the custom-field attribute in txp:article(custom) to list only projects (articles) that belong to that client. For a client sub-nav, you can use txp:article_custom in combination with txp:if_different to list just the custom-field entries of articles (which results in a list of the individual clients). For the company infos, it might just be simplest to duplicate this in the excerpt field of each project and output it using txp:excerpt.
Last edited by jakob (2008-02-14 11:37:20)
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#4 2008-02-14 15:12:01
- diniscorreia
- Member
- From: Lisbon, Portugal
- Registered: 2007-07-18
- Posts: 19
Re: Portfolio with Textpattern, yet again - suggestions needed
Zanza wrote:
I do this without articles, only image organized by categories. I put up a bos_album plugin for this (it uses another plugin, bos_image_display, as a library), so it’s a one-tag job.
I like that approach, using images/galleries instead of articles, because it’s bascially images on the project page. However, project pages have more than one image – most of the times, it’s one image with the width of the content area or two images, each with hald the width of the content area. Meaning: someone has to place the images on the right place and I guess that can’t be done with an automated gallery – can it?
Expecially, if you go for using articles, maybe the sticky articles aren’t needed: you may use categories for organizing clients (then articles for projects).
Unfortunately, I need to assign categories to clients as well! :( They want to have a small badge on the clients submenu that read “updated” or “awarded” – best way to do it will be with categories.
jakob wrote:
If you have more than one project for one client and would also like to browse the work according to project type, e.g. all web projects, all print projects etc. as well as by client, another option would be to make each project an article, allocate the project type as an article category and include the client as a custom field. When you want a list of projects by client, use the custom-field attribute in txp:article(custom) to list only projects (articles) that belong to that client. For a client sub-nav, you can use txp:article_custom in combination with txp:if_different to list just the custom-field entries of articles (which results in a list of the individual clients). For the company infos, it might just be simplest to duplicate this in the excerpt field of each project and output it using txp:excerpt.
Great tips. I do have more than one project per client, however, I don’t want browse for clientes or projects. You would always browse forc clients and, on a client page, you would browse that specific client’s project types — I know this doesn’t make that much sense, but I can’t seen to change my manager’s mind :)
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