have 30 categories with each 10 subcategories

Hi ibis70,

Almost certainly not! That would be unruly. You can probably solve this with 2-3 sections, depending on how you want things to work.

There are probably a lot of similarities between your categories and subcategories, correct? Does each of your categories have the same 10 subcategories? What will be in each of your categories/subcategories, just a single page or a list of things which each need their own page?

Please describe how you'd like the site to work and I'll suggest a simple solution for how to set things up.

Hi Chris,

Really glad you stepped in here, I was going off in the wrong direction completely. Good thing I posted this.

Correct!
There are indeed a lot of similarities between sections, some of them basically have the same 15 or so sub-categories.

Parent Category pages will have a list of all the articles in them, at least the 9 latest articles or so, they include the latest articles from all subcategories.

The subcategories have the latest articles from that particular subcategory in them.

My website will be divided into "channels". Each channel will have a topic: Travel, Lifestyle, Cars & Motorcycles and Shopping. The most complex channel is Travel because we use directory listings and each subject: hotels, ranches, b&b's etc..are listed under their geographical regions.

However visitors can only navigate through the top channels in the header file. When you are in a "channel" the other channels are depreciated and don't turn up in lists of other channels unless they one would do a complete site search.

So basically my directory in a channel goes something like this:

Homepage channel = Top category : example: Travel Canada (single page with list of latest articles from sections below and a short intro text)

Subcategory: General Canadian Travel News
Subcategory: News from...Alberta (list of articles with intro)
Subcategory: British Columbia (list of articles with intro)
Subcategory: Manitoba(list of articles with intro)
Subcategory: New Brunswick (list of articles with intro)
Subcategory:Newfoundland (list of articles with intro)

and then you could have in the same channel:

Top category :Hotels in Canada (single page with list of all hotel reviews (latest) from sections below and a short intro text)

Subcategory: Hotels in...Alberta (list of articles with intro)
Subcategory: Manitoba (list of articles with intro)
Subcategory: New Brunswick (list of articles with intro)
Subcategory:Newfoundland (list of articles)

Does that help, to give an idea?

Hi ibis70,

I think you can probably solve this with two sections: a Category Menu (for your channels, categories, and subcategories) and a Multi Record section for your articles.

Please check out my [url http://www.interactivetools.com/forum/gforum.cgi?post=77230#77230]Sub-categories Tutorial[/url] and see how close that gets you to your requirements. Let me know if you have any questions.

Yes, I checked the tutorial and ran into a few problems. Basically are you saying that all my directories are virtual?

I have a few directory listing categories so I am not sure about this because they are all a little different and need different tables. I don't want to use the same editor for say hotel listing as I would for say vacation rentals. I guess then I would need to create a category menu for each vertical, wouldn't I?

Maybe you could make a list with my examples above to show what you mean.

Thanks, and sorry but I just don't really 'get it' yet.
Elisabeth

Hi Elisabeth

I think the best thing to do first would be actually just create one section in your CMS Builder called "Categories". Make sure to set it up as a Category Menu.

Don't worry about anything else for now. Just get that category section setup and create your categories. And let me know.

Does that make sense for now? Thanks!

Hi ibis70,

When we setup something like this we usually try it a few different ways to see what works and looks best. You can either do that on paper by sketching it out, or just by creating some of the categories in the CMS to get an idea.

The "Category" type of menu supports creating a nested structure of categories. If you have 20 regional subcategories for each "Category" though it might be easier to just have "Region" as an additional pulldown field and not duplicating those regions for each category.

Next, if different categories require different fields then you need to either create different sections (as you originally suggested) or create all the possible fields for all categories in one section and then use divider fields to arrange it in such a way that it makes sense. Such as:

[ Hotel Fields ]

...

[ Vacation Rental Fields ]

...

Or perhaps a combination of both of those solutions.

I hope that gives you some ideas of what to possibly try next. let me know any questions. Unfortunately there's no one-size-fits-all solution, but CMSB is very adaptable so with a little experimentation we should be able to find an approach that works for you site.

Hope that helps!

I am starting to see what you guys mean.

In fact I have it set up in basically this exact way.

I wasn't quite sure how to pull the region selection into the section editors but I expect I have to start by adding the field 'regions' to a directory section.

This is done, and it works.

The directory structure was already structured to include all the subcategories per subject, so its just a case of creating code per region and product.

I'm just trying to figure out how to display all the listings for one region. The easiest way is probably to modify the code of the listing and details page but that's something I will need to work towards.

I tried the above just adding the 'where' => 'region = "alberta"', to a listing page template.

and that works.

Now just wondering to see how to make this go to the specified region list page and not to show hotels from all regions:

<a href="<?php echo $hotelMetaData['_listPage']; ?>">&lt;&lt; Back to list page</a> -

Hi ibis70,

Glad to hear it's coming along.

>Now just wondering to see how to make this go to the
>specified region list page and not to show hotels from all
>regions:
><a href="<?php echo $hotelMetaData['_listPage']; ?>">&lt;&lt; Back to list page</a> -

If you have the current region in a variable such as $record['region'] you could try something like this:

<a href="<?php echo $hotelMetaData['_listPage']; ?>?region=<?php echo urlencode($record['region']); ?>">&lt;&lt; Back to list page</a> -

Or just hard code your own link instead of using _listPage and pass the values needed. For more complex setups that's often easier.

Hope that helps!