I'm building a review site with lots of different categories.
Here's what the site strucure is shaping up to be:
- backtoschool.com
- backtoschool.com/reviews/
- backtoschool.com/reviews/calculators
- backtoschool.com/reviews/mechanical-pencils
- backtoschool.com/blog/
- etc
I'm trying to maintain a visual hierarchy of site navigation, e.g. users at "backtoschool.com/reviews/calculators" should be able to easily see that they're browsing the Calculators subsection within the Reviews section.
Here's where I've given myself a headache.
The problem is, I want my individual calculator and whatnot reviews to be located at the root directory, e.g. when users on "website.com/reviews/calculators" click on a link to my TI-83 Review, they should be taken to "website.com/texas-instruments-ti-83-review", NOT "website.com/reviews/calculators/texas-instruments-ti-83-review".
This leaves me confused as to how I can retain a logical breadcrumb structure (visually speaking).
I was thinking that I could write some kind of IF/THEN statement perhaps in single.php.
Maybe I could write something to the effect of IF post category=calculator-review, THEN load calculator-review.css AND write breadcrumb indicators aka "All Reviews --> Calculators" to the HTML just below the main navigation. On calculator-review.css, I would create styles that would give contrast to the main navigation "Reviews" section, and then below that give contrast to "Calculators" placed in the PHP-written breadcrumb.
OR - and here's where my head explodes
Should I instead create a custom post template like calculator-reviews.php for review section, and then just be sure to use the correct post template for every individual review? This seems easier but I like to keep plugins to a minimum.
I would greatly appreciate your help!
EDIT for clarity:
"backtoschool.com/reviews/" is a Page that contains a list of review types, e.g. calculators, pens, etc.
"backtoschool.com/reviews/calculators" is a Page that contains a list of individual reviews of calculators, which are Posts located on the root domain, e.g. "backtoschool.com/ti-83-review".
Those review Posts will need to somehow be marked so that the WP loop can get all the calculator Posts, and display an excerpt of (some of) them on "backtoschool.com/reviews/calculators/". The review Posts will also need to display breadcrumbs linking back to for example "backtoschool.com/reviews/" and "backtoschool.com/reviews/calculators" IF and ONLY if the user is viewing a review Post on a calculator.
Edit 2:
http://www.touchmyapps.com/category/review/
^^This site does pretty close to what I want mine to do wrt URLs and breadcrumbs
'reviews/calculators'
; apost_type='page'
? What about'texas-instruments-ti-83-review'
; apost_type='review'
? Why would you needcalculator-review.css
orcalculator-reviews.php
? Do reviews exist in multiple categories or only one? What's wrong with using plugins? It doesn't matter if your code is in a theme or in a plugin the overhead is identical; don't accept superstition as a reason to create a sub-optimal architecture (sorry for being harsh on that, I'm tired of people demonizing plugins out of misunderstanding.) – MikeSchinkel Dec 30 '10 at 9:10%postname%
as the permalink setting, creating some posts, and placing them in the categoriesReviews/Calculators
,Reviews/Pencils
, ... Then go to the URLs you propose, and see how they work auto-magically! – Jan Fabry Dec 30 '10 at 12:00