Counting Nodes

Hello All,

I am working on a grid based website, which loads nodes into columns. There are 8 columns for the whole page.
However the nodes themselves can span varying column widths, to highlight more important nodes. So some nodes are two columns wide and some are three columns wide.

The problem I am having is that if columns 1-7 are occupied, and the next node is three columns wide, it jumps this node to the next row and leaves a gap in the grid. Which I don't like.

The information for how 'important' the node is inputted when creating the content through a CCK, a value of 1,2,3 is given to the node.

print $node->field_importance[0]['value'];

What I would like to do, is to create a module, which 'counts' these values. So as a node is created it looks for this value, then adds it to the importance values of the nodes that came before it. Then checks to see if a gap will be left, and if so, it creates a new 'node' to plug the gap. This can be done by creating a new 'div' with the class "node", which will plug the gap:

#prefix' => '

');

Is this even possible to do?

Thanks

R