Multiple articles with individual entries

Question

I am laying out a site which will have a newspaper style IA. There are multiple Main Sections and each section will have multiple Articles and each article has multiple entries.

The client only knows the names of the Articles and needs to create these and then subsequent start adding the entries to each article. The articles have their own Landing Page (listing the entries) and there will be a Landing page for all Articles.

Creating the Articles as sections, with structures would have the benefits of the <nav> tag, but the layout for each entry will be the same.

Which is the easiest for the client? Setting the Articles up as Sections or as Main Categories (which they really aren't as the are simply titles for each article), or is there a better way?

PS: the Articles are like mini-books, with multiple chapters......

Answer 1

I'd be tempted to create a Structure section with Level 1 being the Sections, Level 2 being the Articles and Level 3 being the Entries. But that would depend on how many sections/article/entries you anticipate.

If Sections didn't need to be created by the client, I'd consider adding Sections as their own Structure (as in create a new Structure for each Section), though, as that might help the client when they've got a lot of articles.

Answer 2

There are always so many ways to configure a CMS like Craft. Personally I would make:

• "Articles" a Channel
• "Main Sections" a Structure

Within Articles, you could have a Matrix field, which would in turn contain an Entries custom field, allowing your client to select Main Sections and sort them as content-blocks, using the drag-n-drop features of the Matrix custom field.

From the client's perspective, they would see something like this:

Let us know if that helps, I'm sure others will offer alternatives :)