Content Modeling for Site Architecture Recommendations

Question

I am doing some content modeling for a site with over 100 pages with a pretty deep tree. The site has a lot of what I refer to as "General Pages" as well as a collection of channel type content in the form of news, blogs, and such. In addition there are many unique pages such as contact and application form pages.

My main question is: How to section the over 100 general pages for best balance for client friendliness?

• Do I create one "General Page" channel section and then use or build some sort of nav add-on to create the appropriate heirarchy (This is how we'd roll if we were building this in EECMS for example)?
• Do I use multiple structures, one for each primary nav item? And then figure out how to mix in the other unique singles and entries?
• Tons of singles? (my least favorite option)
• Something else?

I know the answer to these questions given a CMS as flexible as Craft is simply "Yes"; however, would love to get some thoughts on how people have dealt with a well branched site map and lots of "General Pages".

Thanks!

Answer 1

It sounds like you have 3 different general buckets of entries to consider:

• Streams of similar entries (News section, blogs, etc.)
• General content pages (100+ of them)
• Unique/one-off pages (Contact Us, application forms, etc.)

Streams

First, the easy ones: the streams of similar content (news, blogs, etc.) should each get their own Channel sections. A News channel, Bill’s Blog, Sally’s Blog, etc.

General content pages

For the 100+ general pages, I think putting them all in a single “Pages” section makes sense. Find out what different types of pages there will be, and give the section different Entry Types based on those, so authors have the flexibility of choosing what type of page they want to create.

URL format-wise, you can either require that these entries follow a particular slug-based URL format (e.g. every page will have a url such as http://example.com/some-slug), or give them a custom “Page URL” field where authors can choose what the entry URL would be. For the former, the section’s Entry URL Format setting would get set to {slug}; for the latter, it would be {pageUrlFieldHandle}.

As for the type of section Pages should be (a Structure or a Channel), here’s a good rule of thumb: Do you want all of the pages in this section to be shown in the navigation, or just certain ones? If you want them all in the nav, then use a Structure, and use the built-in Structure View on the Entries index to sort out the navigation. Otherwise make it a Channel, and manage the navigation separately (a&m nav and Craft Nav are your two navigation options at the moment).

Unique pages

Finally, the unique pages like Contact Us and application forms. If you have any pages that are truly unique, which you would never conceive needing two of (e.g. a Contact Us page that has a bunch of custom fields that really only apply to that specific page), create Single sections for those pages. Otherwise you may just prefer to lump these in with the Pages section, with the help of a new entry type(s) (e.g. “Application Form”).