I love it when a client changes the parameters mid-stream, NOT. The problem is that my client is also my wife; hence, I can’t say “NO! It can’t be done that way.”
Let me layout some background: The site has a section called “How To”. In this section she wants to present a collection of crafting instruction (ie. Crocheting, etc. etc.). As an example a set of matching coasters, placemats, and pot holders. The “instruction” are broken down into an introduction and then each item. Too further complicate the issue, there might be instances where the post would be short enough that the introduction and instructions could be presented on a single page.
My initial solution was to simply have one weblog post for the entire subject. To break it down into sub-posts I used the pi.paginatee which utilizes {pagebreak:title} inserted in the post. The result: What I have now.
Now she has thrown me a curve ball. She wants to be able to associate a thumbnail with each page with a full size image that will be displayed when you click on the thumbnail.
So, on goes the thinking cap. These are the possible solutions I have come up with:
1. Modify pi.paginatee to permit the inclusion of the thumbnail and image data with the pagebreak tag inserted in the post and the processing of that data. This can be done; however, it becomes both a logical monster and gets really complicated for the user and presents a plethora of ways the user can screw things up.
2. Devising a category structure that organizes posts into a collection. Again, this is doable; but, presents a lot of user logic to process. Also, this forces you to rely on post’s url_title which can get pretty ugly if we end up with duplicated titles from different post collections like “introduction.” This also would present a problem in referencing the collection as a single entity.
3. Using ext.structure/mod.structure to handle the post collection. I love how this allows you to see the hierarchical relationships; however, I have some issues with structures that I can’t get some things to behave consistantly, and the children must be in the same weblog as the parents.
4. Create a weblog to symbolically create a container for the collection, then using relationship to have the parts point at it. This is almost the same as solution 2 but reserves categories for well… categorization.
Ok, now for the crux of this post. Have I missed any solutions? Which way would you suggest I go?