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I've been doing web development for quite some time now but so far I've only been taking care of the coding/integration part. I'm just starting to work on websites from scratch and I'm having an issue on the data structure for one of the websites I got assigned. I really hope I'm posting this on the right forum and I'm giving enough information.

I would like to know how I can split the content between "long" and "short" posts. The website is for a club of runners/swimmers/bicyclers (and people who do all three !). Long posts would be stories/articles while short posts would be just quick information like "next Friday's swimming session has been postponed".

Now I would like to know how this should be structured, because I don't think people would like to read these "short" posts a week after they've been posted, and they would more likely be interested in the stories. Also, these posts would be read mainly by existing members of the club, while non-members would also be more interested in the stories.

Please help me structure the information. Any suggestion or example would be very appreciated.

Thanks

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2 Answers 2

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Ok, so this task is about Information Architecture, and you can look up more on how to do it right in general.

Your case: if I understand correctly, the difference of the content is about the news/updates VS long read content.

Updates. Most logical way for me would be to group updates together as a separate page in members-only area, or a part of a members-only page, newest on top. I would also double that feed in the iFrame on the index, it will be visible to users once they log in. What would be nice is to send weekly updates digest as a newsletter and/or automate a translation to a separate Twitter feed.

Long reads are logically split in topics (health, locations, training techniques, personalities) or categories of site visitors (you have named four). So respectively to how you are planning to display other content, articles should be grouped either on the theme or on the athletics type. Third way would be to use four categories of athletics and add another one that would contain articles on universal topics that concern all users regardless of what their choice of activity is (for example, healthy eating).

Example of the topic split. enter image description here

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  • Thanks for your reply. Actually long reads would be more like "this is a summary of the last week-end" or "here are the results of the marathon" or "here is how you can register to the next marathon". So the "categories" would be "swimming", "running"...
    – user1319182
    Oct 20, 2015 at 15:35
  • I really like the idea of embedding the "events" in the home page. Thanks a lot for that :-)
    – user1319182
    Oct 20, 2015 at 15:36
  • Ok, so it's more like "Urgent notifications" VS "Longer Updates (that are not that long)" :-) I agree, categories might work best for this.
    – Zoe K
    Oct 20, 2015 at 15:38
  • If there is not that many urgent notification planned (one or two per week/month), then I would use a toast notifications for that. Like here top-magento-extensions.com/media/catalog/product/t/o/…
    – Zoe K
    Oct 20, 2015 at 15:41
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    I'm also planning to do more advanced stuff like creating Facebook events automatically and inviting everyone. Anyways, thanks again for your help :)
    – user1319182
    Oct 20, 2015 at 15:56
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I use "long" articles as a means to convert visitors to customers. Each article has its own unique url for Seo.

If you have short event notices then create an events category where all the notices will be present as a stream on a single page. The stream would have one unique url.

You can convert a short event notice to a long article with photos/videos and some info after the event has already happened and you have interesting material to share.

Or use twitter/Facebook and integrate the stream using a module.

Provide more details as I do not fully understand your question, will add more info.

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  • Thanks. I like the idea of having an "events" sections. Yes, I would like the events to be posted automatically on Facebook with a link to the page of the event. I'm not sure about allowing events to be converted into articles though, it'll probably be a lot simpler to just create an article (both for the admin and for the developer).
    – user1319182
    Oct 20, 2015 at 15:30
  • That's what I meant. Create a new article and convert the event notice to a link pointing to it.
    – Marek Andreánsky
    Oct 20, 2015 at 16:05

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