Thread

Hello folks.

I could use some help with a new EE-based web site I’m developing for an art gallery.

Essentially, the site has two main sections:

1) Exhibitions, which will show all paintings belonging to that exhibition, and a list of all artists whose work is on display.

2) Artist profiles, which will show artist bio and a list of all paintings by the artist.

So each exhibition can have multiple paintings (this makes it a bit more complicated), and one painting can belong to more than one exibition. Each painting has one artist.

Can somebody help with the best way to set this up? Use relationships (and how) or jury-rig categories, or a combination of both?

Thanks.

How many authors or who will be using this system? Artists themselves or just an admin?
Depends how you want to present this as well…1 exhibition = 1 entry of multiple images?
You can assign author to an entry for some ‘bio to work’ connections…you also could use category = artist name logic and assign many entries (with 1 or more images in entry)...

Many ways to do this and no single way that is wrong.
Also consider http://pixelandtonic.com/playa for 1-many relationships and/or along with http://pixelandtonic.com/matrix. They are paid extensions but provide much easier interface of management as well as presentations.

Hi. Just one admin. No direct access to the artists.

1 exhibition = slideshow of multiple images, with info on the piece, and a link to the artist profile page for that image.

I don’t mind buying an extension if it will get the job done.

I second lebisol’s suggestion of Playa and Matrix.  I prefer using channel entry relationships over categories for flexibility’s sake.  Together they will greatly simplify your task.  Though in this case, you may not necessarily need Matrix.

Matrix would be a good option if you wanted to enter a multitude of images into a single entry - like all the images in an exhibition - but then if more than one exhibition were to ever include a work of art included in a previous exhibition, you’d be duplicating content a little.  So under those circumstances, I might suggest simply having the dedicated channel for works of art.  The multiple works of art by a single artist can then be tied together using the playa field.

So it sounds to me like you really have 3 channels of content - exhibitions, artists and works of art - and relationships between them.

In my experience, I would suggest a channel for each of the three.  And so in the exhibition channel, you would have a playa relationship field that would allow you to select which works of art will be displayed in that exhibition.

In the works of art channel, you would use a plain old EE relationship field to assign an artist to the work of art (since presumably there would be only one - but if there is even the slightest possibility of needing to assign more than one artist to a single work of art, you could use a playa relationship field here as well.

And the artist channel would be self-contained.  In your templates, you use the playa relationship fields to pull it all together.  That would give you the flexibility to have the one to many relationships you need throughout the site.  So you could then display:

By Exhibition
- the artists represented
- the works of art represented

By Artist
- the works of art by this artist
- the exhibitions in which the artist is exhibited

By Work of Art
- the artist
- the exhibitions in which the work is displayed

That’s the approach i would take in your shoes anyway. Hope that helps.

Jean