Channel with URLs based on entry type

Question

Example: I have content which could be separated into Big News and Small News.

The Big News has much text (which would need a link to its own entry). The Small News has only one text block (so it wouldn't need a separate page for each news).

Whats the best way of handling this? Two separate channels?

One channel with two entry types and a template with a conditional:

{% if entry.type == 'SmallNews' %}{% exit 404 %}{% endif %}

How do you handle this? I guess it is not possible to add These entries have their own URLs based on entry types, right?

Answer 1

I would make this decision based on what makes the most sense for the client. You can realize both solutions on a technical level, so it's really just a question about the preferable CP user experience.

For me this sounds like "Big News" and "Small News" are quite similar, so I'd probably like to have them combined in a single channel. And your template conditional is a good way to handle the manually (accidential?) typed in URLs.

You could even add a dedicated source for the entry index views by making use of the modifyEntrySources hook and some lines of custom plugin code. See this Stack Exchange Q&A for how to do this: Filter entries by entry type in the CP?