By talkingwires on

I'm creating a large site that focuses on state laws. The two primary forms of content will be articles and news stories for each of the fifty United States. I'm having a trouble figuring out how to organize all this content. I have two taxonomies set up: a Location taxonomy with terms for each state and a Topics taxonomy that, obviously contains terms related to the topic of content. Since most states will have a similar set of articles assigned to it, I'm considering using Views to create a page for each state that will show the set of articles, plus current news relevant to that state.

My problem comes when browsing taxonomies. How can I create a block that lets a user filter a topic by his or her state? I've seen one solution in the Handbooks, but it doesn't work. A way to customize a taxonomy term's page and add blocks to it would be great! I've tried some of the modules that claim to give you functionality similar to this, but they're very clunky. Plus, I'd much rather use the tools available in the core. (Especially since I've developing against 5.0.)

I guess my real question is, what is an effective means for the user to sort through all this content? Can anybody with experience developing a large site give me any pointers?

Comments

laura s’s picture

laura s commented

At least for starters, since it plays nicely with other modules. Then you can use taxonomy for other categories. At least that would be my first inclination, not knowing any more about what your site goals are.

Laura
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talkingwires’s picture

talkingwires commented

The Location module might be something to look into in the future. Like I said, the site will focus on specific state laws and procedures, and I hope to incorporate the Organic Groups module and track the location of specific non-profit organizations in the future. Which is why I choose Drupal, actually, since it seems like it will scale very well as I add new features. But for now, I'm keeping it simple: think of it as a small knowledge base for each state, as well as a news tracker for each state. Is that a better explanation of what I'm trying to accomplish? Any thoughts on the best way to present this information?