Yep- it can be a little confusing, especially when you’re getting creative AND getting the hang of the basics at the same time.
Now remember- this is still brainstorming, and I hate to use a paid add-on when I haven’t tested it out and I’m recommending it to someone else. So- take this with a grain of salt. But I think this would work to make the dots:
<ul class="dots">
{exp:category_id category_group="x" category_url_title="{segment_4}" parse="inward"}
{exp:channel:entries disable="categories|member_data|category_fields|pagination|custom_fields" category="{category_id}" dynamic="off" limit="50"}
<li><a href="http://{path=site/our_work/projects}/{segment_4}/{url_title}">*</a></li>
{/exp:channel:entries}
{/exp:category_id}
</ul>
Here’s what’s going on- you want the ‘dots’ to show for just the category you’re on- such as ‘branding’. So in that sense, you want them dynamic- they change according to the category indicator in the url. BUT- when you are on a ‘single entry page’- a page that indicates a specific entry in the url via url_title (or id- but you’re using url_title)- you want the dots to IGNORE the url_title but still be sensitive to the category indicator.
So- I set the ‘dots’ to dynamic off- it ignores everything in the url. But then- we need to make it pick up the category indicator (which will be in segment_4 of the url). I use the add-on Category ID to pluck that out. Note- you’d need to specify the category group where I just put ‘x’. Also note- I don’t have that plugin, so this isn’t fully tested.
At that point- you should have ‘dots’ that only show for entries in the given category. And the dot links should look like:
http://www.vsdesign.com.au/index.php/site/our_work/projects/branding/my_entry_url_title.
When you go to the single entry page with that url, you will need to make sure that the channel tag that shows the main entry should be dynamic off- because your url is a bit non-standard- and then you’ll need to feed it the url_title from the url itself. So:
<div class="article">
{exp:channel:entries dynamic="off" url_title="{segment_5}" limit="1"}
<h2>
{title}
</h2>
<p>{/exp:channel:entries} </p>
<p>
Like I say- brainstorming here. From a skim of the site- I think this would work just fine. But I don’t know everything you’re doing there, and that could change up my approach. Like I say- it’s a non-standard url, because we’re putting a category indicator in there. Which could make things trickier if you were linking to single entry pages somewhere else.
So- not saying ‘Do it this way’, but hopefully running through it has given you some ideas on how EE urls work and how you can play around with them to get the tags serving up what you want how you want it.
Make sense?