Thread

Hi,

Currently I have 1,000+ entries that are submitted by month.  It was originally my intent to publish submissions on a monthly basis.

I’d now like to create issues/volumes.  For example, Issue 1 would be the entries from December - February.  Issue 2 would be from March - May.

What would be the easiest way of accomplishing this?

Thanks!

If your ‘volumes’ consist of nothing but a unique url with a list of entries on each (that apply to that volume) then you could use a combination of the start_on and stop_before weblog entries tag parameters.

If you wanted to be able to assign the entries to volumes creatively, you could look into relationships, or even creating an ‘volumes’ weblog that just has a single entry for each volume, and a entry_date and expiry_date that corresponds with the date range of the intended volume. This will of course complicate the structure, and you may even need to use the query tag to get these entries out on your template, but it would ultimately allow you to package your volumes in a more flexible manner.

I’ve done this before creating a separate weblog for the “issues”. We use regular and reverse relationships to have articles belong to an issue. It worked really well. But now, since they’ve added category custom fields in 1.6, I would create all the issue-meta information as a category, and then assign an article to an issue via categories.

You might also head over to jambor-ee as dealing with “issues” was one of their first articles. =)

http://www.jambor-ee.com/blog/entry/jambor-ee-issues-and-reverse-relationships/

I’ve done this before creating a separate weblog for the “issues”. We use regular and reverse relationships to have articles belong to an issue. It worked really well. But now, since they’ve added category custom fields in 1.6, I would create all the issue-meta information as a category, and then assign an article to an issue via categories.

Currently writers are submitting writing in a category (Essay, poem, etc.), so I’m not sure how I would go about assigning an article to another category.  I’m sure I’m missing something obvious.

Thanks,

Matt

(I wasn’t able to find anything on the jambor-ee site)

Well, then you can create an issues weblog (gives you more flexibility than categories anyways) and create a relationship field in the articles weblog fields that allows you to relate articles to a given issue. Then on your issue pages, you can use reverse_relationships to pull in all articles related to a given issue.

Kinda make sense?

AJP—that seems like a decent way of doing it… though it does add a few extra steps to the workflow…

And, I suppose the same concept can be applied to creating volumes and assigning issues to volumes… right?

Correct, you could do the same for as many levels of hierarchy as you wanted. It is a bit more work, but if you have more information than just an issue title, it allows you to create a summary, pdf links, cover pages, images, etc that are issue specific.

Well, then you can create an issues weblog (gives you more flexibility than categories anyways) and create a relationship field in the articles weblog fields that allows you to relate articles to a given issue. Then on your issue pages, you can use reverse_relationships to pull in all articles related to a given issue.

Kinda make sense?

It all sounds so good, but I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.  Can you possibly provide some additional information so I can search and google around for more info?

Thanks!

Just search the docs for relating entries and reverse related entries.

We’ve done this for Orion Magazine. If your requirements are flexible it’s easy - on the home page we had to implement a bit of custom coding to get the entries for the current issue to sort properly for our needs (They still don’t have category titles like they should: features, columns, editorial etc) and show comments and related entry content (web exclusives).

Take a look at the parameters available for reverse relating entries to make sure it will do what you need out of the box.

Gosh, I just read your original post again and I wouldn’t do it this way at all - I’d just create a monthly archive and title it “issues”.

Man. I totally missed that part ruraldreams. Yeah, *DEFINITELY* make a monthly archive instead of some nested issue/article setup. My way was set up for a quarterly and “when we feel like it” issue publication.

Monthly archives are definitely the way to go in your case.

Creating a simple archive essentially means that content items are in one giant volume, and just being viewed by date. This works for simpler contexts, but for an online magazine that needs to parallel the publishing structure of a printed publication, the method described makes a lot more semantic sense, in my opinion.