aspect of planning your WordPress site.
The site map contained numerous category menu items, but exactly how those categories are set up in WordPress remains to be decided. Take the Vacation Packages posts, for example. They could be set up as a main or parent category, as they're called in WordPress, with a set of child categories, one for each destination (Aruba Packages, Bermuda Packages, and so on). Or each destination could be a parent category, with children such as Aruba Packages, Aruba Testimonials, Aruba News, and so on.
A third approach involves the use of tags, another tool in WordPress for grouping posts (such as the index of a book, while categories are the table of contents). By creating a tag for each of your destinations, you can filter categories by that tag. For example, if you have a category called Vacation Packages, you can get a menu item of Aruba Packages by creating a link to Packages and filtering with the Aruba tag. (Don't worry about the details of this; it is covered in detail in Lesson 20, “Managing Post Categories and Tags.”)
Table 2.1 shows how these three approaches play out (parent categories in bold, child categories in regular text, tags in italics).
Table 2.1 Three Approaches to Categorizing
At first glance, it might look as if the Subject approach is nicely geared toward what your visitors are most interested in: destinations and their favorite vacation suppliers. But what about flexibility of grouping posts?
Now go back to the example of testimonials for a moment. If you choose the Subject approach, it wouldn't be easy to have a single testimonials page displaying all testimonials at one time. You'd need to figure out some way to gather together the various testimonials categories rather than lettingWordPress's parent-child category structure do the work for you. You would have the same problem if you want to have a random testimonial from the list of all testimonials appear on the site's sidebar; unless they're all under one parent category, there'd be some customization work needed.
With the Type approach, however, not only can you easily have an “all testimonials” page by simply displaying the Testimonials category, you also can link the Sun Worship Holidays testimonials category to the Sun Worship Holidays page. Like the Subject approach, though, it does mean creating a lot of child categories. However, the way categories appear on the posts admin screen makes it much easier for you or your staff to be sure you're accurately placing a post in all the right spots.
The Tag Filtering approach is even more flexible, but it does take a bit more work when entering a new post or creating a menu item. You'll need to remember to use the WordPress tag system, not just categories, and how to create special URLs that filter a category using tags. And don't let Table 2.1 leave you thinking that with Tag Filtering you can't have child categories.
In any of these approaches, remember there's the ability to create child categories of child categories for even greater flexibility. Under the Packages category you could have child categories by price level or type of package (resort versus tour and so on).
So you can see there's a lot to think about for organizing your post content; all of it is influenced by knowing how WordPress works. As you move through the book, the process should become clearer, and you'll start to develop your own ideas. Every site will have different needs, of course, but hopefully this lesson gives you some broad guidelines to create your content organization.
The Page Map
Having mapped out individual web pages for your site, it's time to create a map of common elements you want on all those pages (or sometimes on just a few of them).
Figure 2.3 shows a visual page map, but yours can simply be a list with headings indicating the portion of the page you're talking about.
Notice in the sidebar the qualification put on “Destination spotlight of the month.” You don't want to distract visitors with another destination while talking about one destination. Content in any area of the website, not just the sidebar, can be hidden from some pages or only shown on others, so be sure to make notes about that on your page map.
Remember, this map does not need to represent your final site layout; it's about site content outside the main content area. For example, the layout that you choose for Island Travel might have two menus in the header area, which split up the “full site menu,” or you might decide later to move those travel association links into the sidebar. And maybe some of your pages won't have a sidebar.
The key here is to have something in mind as you progress through learning WordPress and creating your site. It will make learning easier and make a better site.
Special Site Functionality
It's now time for another list. You won't need it right away, but it's good to have it as you work your way through this book and through WordPress. It will begin as a list of every function you want your site to perform. As you learn more, you can cross some items off the list until it becomes a list of the things your site needs that WordPress doesn't do. Eventually it will become a list of plugins, the add-on programs that provide WordPress with additional functionality.
For the moment, you just need to write down all the things you think your site needs to do. Following are some examples:
● Run a slider on the homepage.
● Allow visitors to sign up to your mailing list.
● Accept online payments.
● Automatically post to Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.
● Allow visitors to easily pin your pictures to Pinterest.
● Create a pricing table of your services.
● Display an events calendar.
● Track how many visitors download certain files.
● Play video on the site (from YouTube or other sharing sites).
● Display galleries of photos.
● Track the number of visitors and other statistics.
● Create forms.
● Have rotating testimonials on the homepage or in the sidebar.
Try to be as comprehensive and as specific as you can with your list. Some of the items in the example here were items from the page map, and that will often be the case. The page map was about where you want things; this is a list about what you need WordPress to do, so you can figure how it's going to get done. Don't worry if it's a long list or whether you're actually going to have all this functionality on your site (at least right away). This is a wish list to help guide you.
Some of these functions, you'll discover, are built in to WordPress, whereas others will require a plugin. And the more you know exactly what you need from each of these functions, the better you're going to judge which plugin is right for a particular function. In any case, having the list can make you a better WordPress user; learning any software is about knowing what you need it to do, not knowing everything it does.
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