Thread

I need to build a site (my first with ee) that have fairly deep content structure.

Breadcrumbs would look like
Home / Solutions / Solution Group Name / Individual Solution

URL would look like
domain.com/solutions/solution-group-name/solution-name

Thanks for your help.

Have you reviewed the docs around EE’s URL structures?

I get the basic concepts of

http://example.com/index.php/template_group/template

But I’m confused on “Up to 9 URL segments can be accessed ...”

And now with “Template Routes overrides the default behavior of URLs” 

I’m very confused.

http://ellislab.com/expressionengine/user-guide/urls/url_structure.html

Template routes are brand new, and in 10 years of working with EE would have had a need for them maybe 1 or 2 times. For the urls you propose the standard EE URL structure will suffice.

Your “Access 9 segment” quote is for segment variables. EE won’t generate URLs that long but you can artificially add segments and access them using the variables if need be.

Thanks so much for your help thus far.

Is this the basic idea on how to achieve a structure like

http://example.com/solutions/solution-group-name/individual-solution-page

1. http://example.com/solutions (Main Solutions Page)

-Use solutions/index template
-No segment_2 and no segment_3

2. http://example.com/solutions/solution-group-name (Solution groups)

http://example.com/solutions/solution-group-name...

-Use solutions/index template
-Use segment_2 and no segment_3 to display solution group pages

3. http://example.com/solutions/solution-group-name/individual-solution-page

-Use solutions/index template
-Use segment_3 variable to display 1 of 30 solution pages

Thanks again for your help

Thanks so much for your help thus far.

Is this the basic idea on how to achieve a structure like

http://example.com/solutions/solution-group-name/individual-solution-page

1. http://example.com/solutions (Main Solutions Page)

-Use solutions/index template
-No segment_2 and no segment_3

Correct - in that case EE will look for a /solutions/ template group and load the index template in it.

2. http://example.com/solutions/solution-group-name (Solution groups)

http://example.com/solutions/solution-group-name...

-Use solutions/index template
-Use segment_2 and no segment_3 to display solution group pages

In this case EE will first assume you have a template named /solution-group-name/ in the /solutions/ template group.

If it doesn’t find one it will load the /solutions/index template. If you don’t want a template named /solution-group-name/ then EE will leave the next steps up to you. You could have that logic in your /index/ template - basically checking for something in the segment_2 position and handling it appropriately.

3. http://example.com/solutions/solution-group-name/individual-solution-page

-Use solutions/index template
-Use segment_3 variable to display 1 of 30 solution pages

Thanks again for your help

Again, EE will want to assume that you have a /solutions/ template group, a template named /solution-group-name/, and now want to load an entry with the url_title of /individual-solution-page/. If this were the case EE would read the URL dynamically and pull the content based on the url_title in the segment_3 position.

This is how EE wants to work, but you can work against it.  Again you would just build more logic into the solutions/index template.  Just keep in mind that when you add other things that can affect the URL structure (categories, pagination, date archives) etc it gets harder and harder to keep that one index template coded to handle all of of those situations plus accurately 404’ing when it needs to.

Then of course there are template routes now in EE - I haven’t used them but they might alleviate some of the template complexity you might be generating here.

Yea, I need to look into upgrading so I can try the Template Routes

Thanks again.