Subsections

arpan · 2005-02-22 06:22:10

A site that I am working on right now, would work much better with subsections.

Here is what I am doing for the photo gallery

Gallery index page (galleryindex page template) —lists all the places

—*Place one* (place index page template) —lists all the children with photograph

———Individual child info —has three photographs of the child, with info on whether the child is sponsored —(childinfo template

—*Place two* (place index page template)

———Individual child info

—*Place three* (place index page template)

———Individual child info

—*Place four* (place index page template)

———Individual child info

—*Place five* (place index page template)

———Individual child info

Here subsections would be really useful since I need to apply seperate page templates to the subsection. As far as I know, this is not possible with categories.

I solved this problem, by creating the following sections

—Galleryindex

—place1index

—place2index

—place3index

—place4index

—place5index

—place1child

—place2child

—place3child

—place4child

—place5child

If subsections were allowed, it could have been done the following way:

Gallery

——place1

———child

——place2

———child

——place3

———child

——place4

———child

——place5

——child

Although the number of sections are the same, it would just have been better organized, especially when using clean URLs.

Subsections might not make a huge difference for most sites, but it would make it easier to create more complex sites.

note: I could not use categories for the different gallery pages because they needed different page templates.

I did use categories to specify whether a child was sponsored or not, as that just need me to change the location and a seperate form (used Advanced options -> Override form )

Last edited by arpan (2005-02-22 08:04:51)

arpan · 2005-02-22 06:30:12

If subsections do come to textpattern, I think that it would be best if subsections automatically use the setting of the main section ( pagetemplate, CSS ) if nothing is specified.

Then you use custom settings for the subsections only as per requirement.

Anark · 2005-02-22 07:26:59

Another vote for sub-sections.

Minus the article id in the URL.

pospel · 2005-02-25 23:16:30

Need subsections pretty bad too. For now, it’s one and only serious weakness of TXP. Plain structure is really inflexible.

Vote! Tho thums up! :)

gionni · 2005-03-09 00:23:18

yes subsections good!

zem · 2005-03-09 01:15:12

RC3 adds some conditional tags that make it possible to display different page content for categories.

Jeremie · 2005-03-09 02:46:54

Another way to go, is the horizontal access. Ok that will be difficult to explain with my english, and it’s quite late here.

Sections are supposed to handle presentation. But in fact, they are used by almost (almost ?) everyone as a first layer of organized content.

Categories are hierarchical, and much more easy to handle and maintain over time. There are still issue with delivering the content (handling of articles in nested categories and so on), but it’s quite good.

But that’s still a one dimension tree. WHo here, put the same article in more than one section ? Well no-one, since you can’t. So basically, sections are just level 0 categories in a tree.

If you want to add a second dimension – and that would be much needed I agree on that 200% – you can use keywords. Not the usual keywords, but a specific list a unique keywords created by the admin (or whatever), that an athor could assign to his ressources (articles and the like).

SPIP does it, and it’s a very, very, very useful tool.

Let’s take a simple example. If I have a website about cars, let’s say I have a section articles (quite original, isn’t it ?) with all the actual real content. Let’s say I will write about car review, making my owns reviews.

So I create a categories tree like :

europe
- FIAT
- Renault
- BMW
USA
- Ford
- Pontiac

etc.

It’s still a one dimensionnal website. If a visitor wants to browse through, let’s say SUV, he can’t. Well He can use the search tool, but it’s fulltext… with it’s own limitations.

Now let’s say the admin has set up some “metakeywords” (by default of a better taxonomy), like the type of cars, the manufacturers, the type of engine and fuel, and so on. When the visitor read the article, he can have a list of metakeywords. He just click on the SUV, and he see all the articles (or whatever ressources) with that metakeyword, maybe sorted by categories.

Fast, simple, easy. Really.

Last edited by Jeremie (2005-03-09 02:47:22)

Anton · 2005-03-09 13:44:45

Just a thought: wouldn’t keywords solve some of the matrix related issues/wants some of you are expressing here?

atrox · 2005-04-08 02:06:32

I really miss subsections too. At the moment I structure content like this:

Section – Category – Category Sub – Category Another Sub

thatis.com/section/category
thatis.com/section/category sub
thatis.com/section/category another sub

Basically, I can’t really get more then 2 branches on this tree. It would be lovely to have ability to build more complex structures:

Section – Category – - Sub Category – - Another Sub Category

thatis.com/section/category/
thatis.com/section/category/sub/
thatis.com/section/category/sub/another one

alicson · 2005-04-08 20:52:59

another agreement on the usefulness of subsections.
a section about books with subsections fiction and nonfiction, for example, makes more sense than having three sections: books, fiction, nonfiction all at the same level…
however, that’s the way it is right now, so that’s more than liveable for me. but the subsections option would be welcome :)

i have no qualms with article ids, btw.. i think the way they work to assure working permalinks is excellent.

davidm · 2005-04-09 10:41:38

I think what everyone is looking for (just as I am) is the ability to file categories (and subcategories) under a specific section.

Section are intended for presentation and style, which is consistent with a group of content of the same nature, I agree. One “simple” thing to organize sections would be to use… categories. Only you’d be able to optionally define what section you file it under. You could let it be in the default section (which is what TxP does now, in fact), or in a particular section.

As for the SPIP reference : Jeremie, I think categories in TxP indeed akeen to the keyword system in SPIP. It’s a taxonomy, sort of an horizontal structure aimed at facilitating content indexing. Sections are akeen to SPIP’s rubriques. Too bad SPIP is not standards compliant and tableless, and Agora fork is so heavy…

atrox · 2005-04-09 15:11:02

What I’m looking for, is ability to have more than 2 levels in the structure. At the moment I can’t really find the way to do it. Another thing is that categories don’t display properly in Search Engine friendly mode – they’re still required to have ?c=Category+Name in the URL. It would be nice to have a simple, clean URL like: /section/sub-section/category/sub-category/

Also, sections names are tied to their URL name. As in: ‘Section Name’ becomes Section-name’ and to output its name on the page one has to use ‘Section-name’ which looks a bit weird. But that’s another story and I think there is a plug in for it, I just haven’t tried it yet.

guyweb · 2005-10-05 10:55:04

When building a complex site using sections and subsections could the following scenario work?

It is a purely visual usability idea, not a URL structure one or anything like that.

1. You might need “sections” at all.

Most of the stuff that changes on a per template basis is probably the same, you just want the navigation highlighting to change.

2. Use categories instead

Organisational structure of content can be achieved using categories without any need for sections. You can have hierarchys of categories which you can’t have with sections.

3. Pass the value of the category1 name (not category title) to body class=”(category name)”

In order to illustrate to the user where they are within the site, you could pass the variable of the category name to the class of the HTML body tag.

4. Use CSS to illustrate to the user which page s/he is on

Assume that the cateogry name is “carvings”. This value is passed to the HTML:

There is some navigation already defined in the main template:

<ul id=“nav”>
<li class=“home”><a href=”#”>Home</a></li>
<li class=“carvings”><a href=”#”>Carvings</a></li>
<li class=“sculptures”><a href=”#”>Sculptures</a></li>
<li class=“about”><a href=”#”>About</a></li>
</ul>

Each link (li) has a class assigned: “home”, “carvings”, “sculptures”, “about”

And in our CSS file we have some rules..

body.home li.home,
body.carvings li.carvings,
body.sculptures li.sculptures,
body.about li.about {font-weight:bold;}

The CSS would match the “carvings” in the bod class with the “carvings” in the nav list item class and apply the styling (however complex you choose to make it).

As far as I can tell, this can also work for infinitely complex nav structures..

But I may be wrong.

Any thoughts?

Last edited by guyweb (2005-10-05 10:59:09)

grad · 2005-10-05 12:51:35

What we really need is a way to structure and classify content of the site and ability to do it as easy as possible. The easiness is important — remember that publishers are often people who may get lost when faced with a non-intuitive workaround. If TXP is to become a CMS that can be used not only for personal sites but for corporate ones it is a must.

Let’s focus on the functionality:

We need a way to put content of the same nature into separate containers.
We need a way to apply different layout and style to those containers and its content.
We need a way to apply additional classification to content. The classification should be of two kinds: container-sensitive and site-wide.

For 1. & 2. TXP 4.0.1 provides sections, but limits them to only one level. Sections control layout and styling. Expanding them to allow more levels seems to be the way to go to allow layout and styling.

For 3. TXP provides categories which are multi-level but are only site-wide. Adding option to hook them to (sub)sections may be the way to go. I support david’s idea.

One important note about clean URLs — they should be really clean. They should look like <code>site.com/section-name/[sub-section-name/]category-name/[sub-category-name/]</code> when displayed under a section or <code>site.com/category-name/[sub-category-name/]</code> for site-wide only categories when not displayed under a section. Also adding more categories would might be useful, e.g. for multilingual sites.

Last edited by grad (2005-10-05 13:05:23)

davidm · 2005-10-05 13:34:45

grad, that’s a good summary of what we need, and I agree on this being a must-have for corporate websites. This has been a much discussed subject and most seasonned veterans here agree that we should have subsections and/or the ability to hook categories under sections.

The thing is currently categories are not truly hierarchical even if you have category1 category2 for a given article… I’ll even go as far as saying that categories in txp are more akin to what would in fact conceptually be content tagging… we lack a tool to really organize content in categories which in fact as you say should be “containers” (in the sense of logical containers).

I know that the goal of a CMS is to make a clean separation between content and presentation. The current state of what we have with txp is :
content <=> categories
presentation <=> section

If we go deeper (please help me and correct me here) :

each section can have a different CSS

Different CSS means different styling : fonts, positionning, colors…

each section can have a different page

Different pages means different information structure (through html elements)
Different pages means different txp tags for each section (but this can be achieved with a single page with conditionnals)

each article can belong to

a section
up to two categories

we can

display a list of section w/link (<code><txp:section_list /></code>)
display a list of categories w/link (<code><txp:category_list /></code>)
display a list of all the articles by section (<code><txp:rss_suparchive /></code>)
display a list of all the articles by category (<code><txp:rss_suparchive /></code>)
display a liste of all the articles of a given category (<code><txp:article_custom> with category parameter</code>)
display a list of all the articles of a given section (<code><txp:article_custom> with section parameter</code>)
display only the articles of the current section (use <code><txp:if_article_section></code> in form)
display only the articles of the current category (use <code><txp:if_article_category></code> in form)

… (needs to be completed)

we can’t (???)

display a list of link with categories filed under sections
display a list of all articles belonging to a given section and to a given category1
display a list of all articles belonging to a given section and to a given category2
display a list of all articles belonging to a given section and to a given category1+category2

… (needs to be completed)

Last edited by davidm (2005-10-05 18:10:59)

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#16 2005-02-22 06:22:10

Re: Subsections

#17 2005-02-22 06:30:12

Re: Subsections

#18 2005-02-22 07:26:59

Re: Subsections

#19 2005-02-25 23:16:30

Re: Subsections

#20 2005-03-09 00:23:18

Re: Subsections

#21 2005-03-09 01:15:12

Re: Subsections

#22 2005-03-09 02:46:54

Re: Subsections

#23 2005-03-09 13:44:45

Re: Subsections

#24 2005-04-08 02:06:32

Re: Subsections

#25 2005-04-08 20:52:59

Re: Subsections

#26 2005-04-09 10:41:38

Re: Subsections

#27 2005-04-09 15:11:02

Re: Subsections

#28 2005-10-05 10:55:04

Re: Subsections

#29 2005-10-05 12:51:35

Re: Subsections

#30 2005-10-05 13:34:45

Re: Subsections

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