Hi,
I’m running into a channel entries problem that is doing my head in. For a financial news site I’m working on, the client wants to “group” channel entries together by month, and in each month, there is a topic title or theme.
For example;
- “December 2011: Crisis in Europe”
- “January 2012: Will China Save the World?”
...etc. Each group will only have four entries/stories assigned at any one time, and one of those stories will be designated the ‘primary’ story, where the other 3 are supplementary to the primary story.
Here’s the thing:
- My template page needs to display the primary story with the 3 supplementary stories in the sidebar. Another sidebar lower down will display the ‘Primary’ story link from earlier topics. That’s ok for the home page, because it always displays the latest group topic and associated entries.
- But what about linking into previous topic groups? How do I set up a template that loads, say, an October 2011 story in the main column, with the 3 related stories in the sidebar, all with the group title of, say “Greek Debt Problems”, along with the entry title itself?
- Also, how do i set up the URL structure, so that it displays by date? Example: http://example.com/october2011/Greek_debt_problems/[entry_title]
I’m thinking I need a combination of categories, related entries, and entry date conditionals, but I fear its all going to get ridiculously complicated (and difficult for the client to manage).
Any elegant solutions appreciated!!
Nik