Insert a url segment without creating sections

Question

I have a very simple site split into sections. All pages use just one template.

The previous site had sections such as /section/subject. I had thought I could have all entries in just one section and then alter the URL on each entry to include a 'pretend' section /section/{slug}, but this defaults to /section-subject.

Is there a way to have /settings/subject/ without creating new sections?

Many thanks

Martin

Answer 1

From what I gather from your question you want some sort of sub-categorisation of your entries.

Such that one entry can have the URL as: siteUrl/section/subject-1/entry-slug

while another entry can have a URL as: siteUrl/section/subject-2/entry-slug

If that is what you want to achieve then you have to look into Structures instead of Channels

Here is the link: http://buildwithcraft.com/docs/sections-and-entries#sections

You can basically have multiple entries with sub-urls in the same structure section.

Answer 2

As Moin suggested a Structure works very well for this. I would add that you can also define different Entry Types for the different levels and/or page types (i.e. section landing page vs. entry page vs contact page) and test for entry.type in your template.

{% extends "_layout" %}

{# switch content based on Entry Type #}
{% switch entry.type %}
    {% case 'landing %}
        {# my landing page content or template include #}
    {% case 'entry' %}
        {# my entry page content or template include #}
    {% case 'contact' %}
        {# my contact page content or template include #}
{% endif %}

Or, if you don't want or need an actual landing page you can create 'pretend' empty entries (i.e. entries with title and slug only) for the sole purpose of generating the navigation and uri segments that your looking for. If someone clicks a link to one of the these 'empty' pages (or accesses the url directly) you can simply redirect them to the next entry in the hierarchy that actually has content.

{% extends "_layout" %}

{# if no body content and has descendants (i.e. no landing page) 
 # redirect to first descendant with content defined #}

{% if not entry.body is defined or entry.body == "" %}
    {% set decendants = entry.descendants %}
    {% if decendants|length %}
        {% redirect decendants.first().url %}
    {% endif %}
{% endif %}

{% block content %}
    {{ entry.title }}
    {{ entry.body }}
{% endblock %}

If you don't want to trust 'body' being empty, you could also more explicitly define an entry type that had no fields other than title, called 'pretendSection' for example, and test for that entry type, and redirect as above.