Outline of the site structure I am trying to create (January 2022). Kathy
Front page
This will come much later, after the site is better organized.
The front page needs to be much more dynamic than other pages. Among other things, this requires that the site make good use of the distinction between posts and pages. There should be a column of articles from the most recent newsletter (these should be posts.) There should be announcements of upcoming events and ongoing registration deadlines (more posts). There should be a section that provides quick links to member services (e.g., registration and membership forms, current newsletter and catalog, a page of contacts…)
Principal pages and children
(* indicates a cornerstone page, that is, one of the pages that we should link back to wherever appropriate, driving traffic to it. Cornerstone pages might have a uniform look or template. For example, cornerstone pages could use cover blocks, something we would not do on many pages.)
*About LIR
This is basically a public-facing page. It should provide information and links to the first things that someone unfamiliar with LIR needs to know.
- Membership benefits
*For Members
This is an entry point for members, rather than the public. It should provide quick links to the things they are most likely to be looking for, like forms, newsletters, catalogs, announcements…
- Membership fee structure with link to form
- Current newsletter
- Certain blog archive pages (especially the Announcements category)
*LIR programs
- *Seminars
- Current seminar information
- Seminar archives
- Extracurricular activities
- Public programs
*Governance
- Council and Executive Committee
- Council archives
- Committees
- Manuals and Guidelines
Then there are miscellaneous pages that are not so easily categorized:
- Calendar page
- Page with links to various forms
- Membership fee structure
Posts and Categories
When properly structured, “archive” or “multipost” pages are generated automatically by WordPress. At the moment we have only one post archive page, Blog, which lists all posts by date. If we had a category structure, or tags, a lot of other archive pages would automatically be generated.
Currently, for example, a large number of seminar archive pages are being generated manually. (This is why they haven’t been updated since about 2012.) My solution to this problem is to create a Custom Post Type (Seminars) with a custom taxonomy. This is a work in progress, but once it is done keeping it up to date will be easy and those manually-constructed tables will be generated automatically. More than half of the existing Pages should be Posts or Custom Posts.
Here are some categories or tags we will need. Once we have enough posts it will be easier to figure out what is needed to organize them. I indicate “category” or “tag” below but that is very preliminary.
- news: category, possibly with subcategories
- newsletter: tag indicating a newsletter item
- issue: tag indicating newsletter issue (e.g., February 2022)
- announcement: category
- event: tag?
- alert or deadline: tag?
Menus and other navigation aids
Standard menus are two menus in the header and one in the footer. Additional menus can be placed if needed.
I expect the main header menu to line up fairly closely with the cornerstone page architecture.
I am currently using the second header menu for developers. I’m hoping that it can be hidden from non-logged-in visitors; I’m pretty sure this is possible but I don’t yet know how to do it.
I have put some miscellaneous quick links in the footer menu. Contact information of various kinds also should be in the footer.
The main sidebar, which is set up at the moment to be visible only on blog archive pages, typically helps people find posts by category, tag, or date. I believe a different sidebar could be created for Pages. I am not really a fan of sidebars on Pages. However, I am open to rethinking this.
I think the best way to get people to the important miscellaneous pages is by buttons and links in the footer. The front page needs extra links, but perhaps not too many. If only a few additional links need to be prominent on the front page (such as an “I want to…” button), then I think a cover block with buttons is the way to go.