proper set up - post/page/elements

Hi there,

first off - just to get a better understanding, if i were to visit a "Child Page" on your site, what would i see ?
Its best that the child dictates whether you use a Post, a Page or another Post Type.

Posts are notably different due to the additional meta they have ( by default ) eg. Publish Date, Modified Data, Author, Taxonomy ( Categories and Tags ) Terms, Comments.

Are these things a requirement for the child pages ?

Thanks - hopefully below is better explanation;
example;
Photography (nav menu)
(leads to)
Photo Page/Post - various pics representing specific group (ie birds, flowers, etc)
When specific pic for group clicked
(leads to)
Group Page/Post – various pics under that group

Nothing needs to be arranged/viewed based on author, date etc., but may add tags to later be able to separate by other sub group factors such as color or species.

The Featured nav menu page/post will have images with a story about them, each of those should be able to link to their respective group page. Here the arrangement for each will be pic next to blurb with the most recent addition at the top (of which the most recent 2 or 3 will be linked to the homepage)

On the homepage I want to put 2 or 3 Featured photos with a blurb tag line leading to location on Featured page.
I hope this makes more sense – if not, will get back when I have sample I can link you to

OK that helps.
Just drilling a little deeper, if i select a Flower Image on the Photo Page and arrive on the Group Page for flowers.
Can i click on a single image and get more information about it ?

If you can then maybe treat each image as a Post. For example:

1. Create a new Post, give it a title based on the image it will contain eg. Rose
1.1 Add the Rose Image to the Featured Image of the post.
1.2 Add a Category term called Flowers
1.3 Add any other information you want to the post content.
1.4 Disable the Comments, or keep them enabled if thats what you want.
1.5 Save the Post.

2. Repeat the above for each of the images.

Now WordPress and GP will automatically create a Archive page for each of your Categories.
If you visited www.yourwebsite.com/category/flowers you will see a list of all your Flower posts.

If in the future you wanted to add other taxonomies such as Tags, for say the color then you could do so.
And again WP/GP creates the archive page for that.

All thats required now is a Static Page for your Photo Page/Post here you would want to add an Image for each of your Groups and link it to the relevant archive page.

Let me know

Hi David,

Many thanks for your comments above. I've been away and do apologize for late reply. I've played quite a bit with the site and have a tiny bit more of an understanding now. Working as suggested above may be quite heavy. Is there any way of adding tags or categories on an image level with generateblocks or other method? I started creating a page for photographs, then sub pages for collections by main topic. I thought about creating blog instead of page for the sub page, but it doesn't give me the breath I'm looking for. If I understand what you suggested above, I may have a main page for all the flowers, but would need to create a single blog for each flower, then another for color, then another for type of flower, etc., for tags to each.

Looking forward for suggestion.

Hi Tali,

The suggested solution above would be to create a post for just flowers.

Then, you can set tags and categories for the flowers independently.

So, for instance:

Post 1: Sun Flower
Tags:
-Yellow
-Shrub

Post 2: Dahlia
Tags:
-Yellow
-Bulb
-Perennial

Post 3: Rose
Tags:
-Red
-Yellow
-White
-Perennial

Then, through this, if you go to the archive page of Yellow, you would see Posts: Sun Flower, Dahlia and Rose.

If you go the the archive page of Perennial, you would see Dahlia and Rose.

Etc.

Image Level categories are not available through GenerateBlocks, and it’s not a functionality available by default currently in WordPress.

Usually, there’s plugins that allow this functionality, but only to sort them in the Media Library. Not in a sense of creating archive pages.

Hope this clarifies!

Thanks Fernando. So if I do that, and add a "search" area by the menu, and the viewer types in "shrub", then they would get the sunflower, but if they typed yellow, they would get a page with all 3?

I have several categories of photos and digital art, so this will be cumbersome, but if understood correctly, I can set up pages the way I have in mind, then set up blog pages for the individual categories to work with a search function.

Hi Tali,

By default, WordPress search doesn’t include searching for tags and categories.

You can add a plugin though that would allow you to search by tags and categories.

I’m not sure I understand the second paragraph correctly. To clarify, is your plan to create a static page for example yellow flowers so on and so forth?

If so, creating individual posts of flowers also give you an archive page automatically.

Kindly let us know.

Hi Fernando,

Example - the Photography page would have a sample image of several categories - ie., flowers, landscapes, butterflies, etc. - there will be one image for each category, that when clicked takes the viewer to the page for that topic (which is also a sub-page in the menu) - all are currently set up as "pages" - images will be continuously added to the subpage for the specific category (high level category - ie., flowers vs yellow flowers).

I see. Thank you for clarifying. That structure could work as well if that’s what you prefer.

However, if you’re planning something big, usually, Custom Post Types are created.

For instance, the post type in your case would be flower.

Then, this custom post type would have an image and other details.

Then, you add flowers one by one.

Then, you can manually query these flowers in static pages through a Query Loop Block.

In this way, it would be automatically added to the static page.

For instance, your static page is Yellow, and your Query Loop Block retrieves all yellow tagged or categorized flowers.

For scalability, this would be the ideal way.

But if you’re planning something not that big, your approach would be good as well.

Hope this clarifies!

Thanks Fernando. Yes, I want to design the site with scalability in mind. There are a few different directions it may take and I would like to design in a quality manner to allow for growth. As I am still clearly learning basics, query loop is an area I am at a loss with - therefore need to play with it to ask a little more "intelligent" questions. Where can I go for best instruction - with a sample if possible. Also, I saw there is an upcoming upgrade for generateblocks - 1.5, which is in beta right now. Based on what I was reading it would have a direct impact on what we are doing here. When will it be released?

The main thing to note that it is a WordPress function that saves 'data' and adds relationships to that 'data'. That data comes in the form of Post Types such as Posts, Pages or Media Attachments. And those relationships are Taxonomies ( categories and tags ) for Posts, and Hierarchical ( Parent/Child ) relationships for Pages.

The Theme, the core query loop block or the upcoming GB Query Loop ( which will be released within the next 15 days ) does not do anything to change that functionality. There job is to simply display the data based upon they query parameters you define such as All Posts in Category of Flowers.

Which means you must construct the correct structure of your site.

Lets look at an example.
We have some photos of Flowers, that we want to view by Species and Individually.

Option 1
We create a Parent Page called Flowers
We add a Child Page of Species: Species Name
And on each child page we add all the images of that species.

Option 2
We create a Post for each of Individual flowers.
We tag each flower post with its Species: Species Name
We add each flower post to the Flower Taxonomy

In Option 1 our data relationships are limited to Parents and Children, so in order to see a species you have to visit the parent and the child. But there is no easy way to sell ALL Flowers or This Species and that Species

Whereas Option 2 you can easily query using the Themes Category archives or the Query Loop or GB Query Loop block to show different assortments of Flowers.

Thanks David. I have started the current set up based on Option 1 above. I see it would be much better utilizing Option 2. However, I'm still a bit confused on the interactions to show how I am envisioning. I will play with a test using a couple of different images with commonalities to see how it's showing up - one of the questions is the interaction between the static page and the post pages - will "play" and revert with further questions - perhaps giving you access to see site for further guidance.

Hi David,

Well, clearly I’m not exactly the smartest tuna in the sea on this topic …. I am completely confused on what to do. Would you mind looking at my site?

1) I’d like to update the “Featured Works” weekly with the most recent 3 showing at the bottom of the home page. How to loop? Right now I have the link to the featured page from the home page, then the link from the featured page to the page where the piece belongs with others under the same category (obviously working on content for the pages, but getting the mechanics down..)
2) I set up some test images in post – both the individual images with tags and categories, etc. – also set up a test post and a test page to see how to loop in – can’t figure it out …. At the bottom of both of those (currently showing in menu) I input the images, then on top set up (or tried) the query loop – although it’s recognizing they belong on the page in general, no image is showing for any (formatting otherwise would need to be edited, but for the most part I know how to do that)

I’m wanting to keep the site “clean” and relatively minimalist in style.

What am I not doing correctly? I have hundreds of images to format as well as several more categories, etc., and don’t want to go through all the work to have to start over again.

Hi Tali,

So right now, your homepage is set as your blog posts page as well. Meaning, all posts you create would appear here. If you want to set a static page as your homepage (which you can modify and keep “clean”), in your admin dashboard, go to Settings > Reading. Then, set a static page as your homepage, then choose a page for your posts page (if you don’t have one, you may create one - you may leave the page you create empty.)

Now, if you’ve set the homepage up, going back to the Query Loop, the GB Query Loop Block will be released along with the 1.5 update in around 2 weeks as mentioned by David.

However, you may try it out here: https://generateblocks.com/generateblocks-1-5-dynamic-data-query-loops-image-blocks/

Once you have GB 1.5.0, you’ll be able to add a Query Loop Block wherein you’ll be able to get “Featured Works” or any posts for that matter.

Here’s a short screen recording of how you can add and use a Query Loop Block: https://share.getcloudapp.com/QwunGqRo

Hope this clarifies!