Thread

I’m a newbie to EE. A subcontractor let us down badly and now I have to build a web site in EE for the first time.

Our client is a driving school and as such they have a number of instructors offering different lessons across a multitude of geographic areas in a variety of cars. Therefore, when a visitor lands on the intensive lessons page I want to display a tabbed panel.  The tabs will feature the following:

Instructors offering that lesson
Geographic areas covered
Testimonials (related to Intensive lessons only)
FAQs (related to Intensive lessons only)

An instructor will offer more than one type of lesson and will operate across more than one geographic area.

I understand that related entries will not work because it doesn’t support multiple relations. Is this a job for Playa? What is the best way to go about setting up this faceted navigation (if indeed that is what it is).

Any help or comments would be gratefully received.

Yours,
Carl (an EE newbie)

Hello Carl,

Looking at what your wanting i would suggest having a channel for Instructors, with all the required channel fields needed for information about your instructors, which would include maybe a text field or matrix field containing latitude/longitude values, used for finding their geographic areas being covered.

Another channel with appropriate channel fields for testimonials

And another channel again with appropriate channel fields for FAQ’s, i would also suggest setting up categories for the FAQ so you can group FAQ posts together when need be.

As for displaying the content, it would be pulling the instructor/s data offering the lesson which is selected, then display a location of where each instructor could cover. If your linking the testimonials to each instructor you could do that by adding in a instructor_id field into the testimonials channel and having the id of the instructor (from the instructors channel) automatically put into the testimonial when created. That way you can have the testimonials grouped with each instructor information. Then you can loop through the FAQ posts and put them in a desired order.

Im not sure if this is the right way of going about it, but it seems logical to me. As you are wanting multiple lessons and geographical locations per instructor i would suggest use of the matrix field.

Shaun

Thanks Shaun,

Testimonials can be submitted against the lesson type and/or the instructor.  I guess I may need 2 channels?

The idea is that a visitor will land on a lesson type page and I need to pull in the instructors that offer that lesson type.  In addition, the areas covered need to be pulled in I.e. Edinburgh, Glasgow.  Finally, FAQs and testimonials related to the lesson type need to be pulled in to the tabbed panel.

I want to ensure that duplicate data is not present in the database and so I want to relate channels together.

You didn’t mention Playa and only Matrix ...

Thanks,
Carl

To chime in here, I might actually set up a geographic ares channel so that you can also have a geographic-area entry-view, permitting you to have area-specific granular SEO information in you site on those pages. And playa would certainly pull everything together. You’ll have to determine in which channel the playa field(s) would be best to reside. Normally you want it in the channel that is the one part of the one to many relationship. And you can use playa’s own equivalent of the reverse related entries tag to display the fluidics of the relationship. So the instructor view could show courses and geographic locations for each, areas could show courses and instructors, and courses could show instructors and geographic areas - while each could have their own SEO information for their distinct views. Just more food for thought.

To chime in here, I might actually set up a geographic ares channel so that you can also have a geographic-area entry-view, permitting you to have area-specific granular SEO information in you site on those pages. And playa would certainly pull everything together. You’ll have to determine in which channel the playa field(s) would be best to reside. Normally you want it in the channel that is the one part of the one to many relationship. And you can use playa’s own equivalent of the reverse related entries tag to display the fluidics of the relationship. So the instructor view could show courses and geographic locations for each, areas could show courses and instructors, and courses could show instructors and geographic areas - while each could have their own SEO information for their distinct views. Just more food for thought.

... Nice =)

I did not mention Playa as i don’t have any experience with it yet =P i know a matrix field is suitable to what your asking for though.

I will give this a bit more of a think and come back to you.
have fun and enjoy EE (it is very powerful)

To chime in here, I might actually set up a geographic ares channel so that you can also have a geographic-area entry-view, permitting you to have area-specific granular SEO information in you site on those pages. And playa would certainly pull everything together. You’ll have to determine in which channel the playa field(s) would be best to reside. Normally you want it in the channel that is the one part of the one to many relationship. And you can use playa’s own equivalent of the reverse related entries tag to display the fluidics of the relationship. So the instructor view could show courses and geographic locations for each, areas could show courses and instructors, and courses could show instructors and geographic areas - while each could have their own SEO information for their distinct views. Just more food for thought.

Okay then. Thanks for your reply.

So I would have the following channels setup:
Instructors
Lesson Types
Areas Covered
Testimonials
FAQs

In the instructors channel I would have the following custom fields:
Title
Lessons Offered (Playa field type)
Areas Covered (Playa field type)

When viewing the “Intensive” lesson type on the front end, if the visitor was viewing the Instructors tab I could use Plays’s reversed related entries tag to grab the instructors.  For the areas covered tab how do I populate with areas given that the relationship isn’t direct i.e. From lesson type I can establish the instructors and from instructors I can establish areas covered.

Thanks for you help so far and sorry if the questions seem a little much.  I’ve read a lot about EE but haven’t a lot of hands on experience.

Thanks,
Carl