CONSTRUCTING A LARGE INFORMATIONAL SITE

700+ POSTS – 1 MENU

WordCamp Miami 2015Becky Davis

BeckyDavisDesign.com

@beckyddesign

2Beckydavisdesign.com @beckyddesign

ABOUT BECKY

Theme Dev from Chicago 1st WordPress site in 2009 1st WordCamp – Chicago 2010

Speaker Chicago, Milwaukee, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, Miami. Attendee at dozens others.

WordCamp site design – Chicago 2011

Number of WordPress custom themes built – 50+ Mom – both kids just out of college Beckydavisdesign.com @beckyddesign

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IN THE BEGINNING…. THERE WAS CHAOS

New pages and sections added regularly for over 5 years with no planning

Articles done as Pages with dozens of templates organizing the structure and NO categories

Major landing sections different and inconsistent

Unwieldy menus, attempts to add each new article to a sub-menu

HARD to find ANYTHING

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THEN THERE WAS A RE-DESIGN (FINALLY)

IA showed us consistent landing pages/menus

links as category terms, not posts

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ALL IS WELL WITH THE WORLD

Then I saw the links that combined 2 terms (Avian + medical term), hmmm

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THEN SHE SHOWED US FACETS

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WAIT… WHAT???!!

Can WordPress do that?

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WHAT IS IT I’M TRYING TO DO?

Categories are used to separate out and group posts together

Custom taxonomies take that even further and allow us whole separate sections

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What was needed here was a way to DEFINE the individual posts by MULTIPLE TERMS

AND to be able to show groups of posts together by COMBINATIONS of terms

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HOW

Create multiple taxonomies Define terms Assign to posts

Taxonomies and terms carefully thought out and planned (but able to add more terms on the fly)

Regular post used – editor goes through to check off appropriate terms

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LANDING (SECTION) PAGES & MENU Links: query by taxonomy term and children

<?php //full list of children of one term

$taxonomy_name = 'species'; $term_id = icl_object_id(4, $taxonomy_name, false); //birds ?> <ul> <?php wp_list_categories( array( 'taxonomy' => $taxonomy_name, 'child_of' => $term_id, 'title_li' => '',

'hide_empty' => 0, ) ); ?> </ul>

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Links: query by 1 term from 1 taxonomy + all terms of 2nd taxonomy

<ul><?php //list all terms of one taxonomy, then put in combined url with another tax term

$taxonomy_name = 'topics'; $terms = get_terms( 'topics', $args = array( 'orderby' => 'name', 'order' => 'ASC', 'hide_empty' => true) ); foreach($terms as $term) : ?><li><a href="<?php echo esc_url( home_url( '/' ) ); ?>exotic/#!/species=4&topics=<?php echo $term->term_id ?> "> <?php echo $term->name ?></a></li> <?php endforeach; ?> </ul>

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FACETS ALL links, ALL search terms go to a

faceted template page, so results can be filtered further.

This allows the user to find info Quickly from a Variety of Directions Search Menu Landing section page

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Same facets, different template to display the videos

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FACETWP PLUGIN Facets were done with FacetWP plugin

Facets can be defined by taxonomies, categories and a variety of other sources

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Facets use templates that can be customized Any faceted page needs to be assigned a

template

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ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES

50 - 1000+ posts Find information quickly

Save lives! Never have to re-build a menu Editor doesn’t have to worry if it will show up

in the right place, it will

Questions? I’ll be in the Happiness Bar all afternoon.

Thanks!