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Hey everyone. We have built probably 100 EE powered websites, most of which have been simple layout structures with sub pages not spanning more than one or two segments.

-Homepage
—Subpage
—-Sub Subpage

To accomplish the above we normally utilize categories for entry filing only, which really serves no purpose other than maybe a navigation on a sidebar with a category url matching a template group. Then we normally create a Channel for each subpage and have an index for the subpage and a template we call ‘view’ to load the sub subpage content by using the entry url.

I have a new client that has a rather extensive subpage layout with multiple levels of subpages. We are realizing quickly that wow, we really don’t understand how to properly use categories.

What we are trying to figure out is probably SO SIMPLE we are overcomplicating this… but for the life of us we cannot properly understand or figure out how to do the following:

We would like to use a single channel for ALL content.  Then use categories to publish their website structure and by selecting or creating new categories, create the overall sitemap or layout.

So…  One channel called “Content” then the content driven by the categories.

This has to be simple…

—Homepage
—Section 1
—-Section 1 A
——Section 1 A 1
—Section 2
—Section 2 A
—Section 2 B
—Section 2 C
—Section3
—-Section 3 A
——Section 3 A 1
—and so on

All driven by categories.  We would like to utilize a single template group and template to accomplish this goal instead of using our default index and view template.

Template wise we’re not sure how to call the channels, assuming using segments..  can anyone point me to documentation or examples on how to accomplish this what probably is a simple task? 

As I said before we are sure we are over complicating this..

Thanks in advance for the help!!

Generally using categories as way to create hierarchy for a whole site isn’t a great idea. EE’s native categories are meant to be simple filters of blog-type content. Push them much past that and they start to break down.

For the type of structure you show I’d recommend the Taxonomy add-on, wherein you use Taxonomy to create the hierarchy and map each node to a content entry and template for presentation. Taxonomy then generates the navigation for the site.

Incidentally - this quote give me a bit of a chill:

Then we normally create a Channel for each subpage

It makes me wonder if you are trying to force EE to be a hierarchical page-based CMS, rather than an entry-based CMS. Channels should be created for each type of content (FAQs, Products, Bios, etc) and hold multiple entries.  One channel per page - in general - just isn’t an efficient way of using EE and runs a bit contrary to how EE wants to manage content.