1. CONSTRUCTING A LARGE INFORMATIONAL SITE 700+ Posts – 1 Menu
WordCamp Miami 2015
Becky Davis
BeckyDavisDesign.com
@beckyddesign

2. About Becky Theme Dev from Chicago 1st WordPress site in 2009
1st WordCamp – Chicago 2010
Speaker Chicago, Milwaukee, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, Miami. Attendee at dozens of others.
WordCamp site design – Chicago 2011
Number of WordPress custom themes built – 50+
Mom – both kids just out of college
Beckydavisdesign.com @beckyddesign

3. In the Beginning…. There was chaos
New pages and sections added regularly for over 5 years with no planning
Articles done as Pages with dozens of templates organizing the structure and NO categories
Major landing sections different and inconsistent
Unwieldy menus, attempts to add each new article to a sub-menu
HARD to find ANYTHING

4. Then there was a re-design (finally)
IA showed us consistent landing pages/menus
links as category terms, not posts

5. All is well with the world
Then I saw the links that combined 2 terms (Avian + medical term), hmmm

6. Then she showed us facets

7. Wait… What???!!
Can WordPress do that?

8. What is it I’m trying to do?
Built in Category is used to separate out and group posts together by Terms
Custom taxonomies take that even further and allow us whole separate sections

9. What was needed here was a way to DEFINE the individual posts by MULTIPLE TERMS
AND to be able to show groups of posts together by COMBINATIONS of terms

10. HOW Create multiple taxonomies Define terms Assign to posts
Taxonomies and terms carefully thought out and planned (but able to add more terms on the fly)
Regular post used – editor goes through to check off appropriate terms

11. Landing (section) pages & Menu
Links: query by taxonomy term and children
<?php //full list of children of one term
$taxonomy_name = 'species';
$term_id = icl_object_id(4, $taxonomy_name, false); //birds
?>
<ul>
<?php wp_list_categories( array(
'taxonomy' => $taxonomy_name,
'child_of' => $term_id,
'title_li' => '',
'hide_empty' => 0,
) ); ?>
</ul>

12. Links: query by 1 term from 1 taxonomy + all terms of 2nd taxonomy
<ul>
<?php //list all terms of one taxonomy, then put in combined url with another tax term
$taxonomy_name = 'topics';
$terms = get_terms( 'topics', $args = array(
'orderby' => 'name',
'order' => 'ASC',
'hide_empty' => true) );
foreach($terms as $term) : ?>
<li><a href="<?php echo esc_url( home_url( '/' ) ); ?>exotic/#!/species=4&topics=<?php echo $term->term_id ?> "> <?php echo $term->name ?></a></li>
<?php
endforeach;
?>
</ul>

13. Facets
ALL links, ALL search terms go to a faceted template page, so results can be filtered further.
This allows the user to find info Quickly from a Variety of Directions
Search
Menu
Landing section page

16. Same facets, different template to display posts with videos.

17. FacetWP plugin Facets were done with FacetWP plugin
Facets can be defined by taxonomies, categories and a variety of other sources

18. Facets use templates that can be customized
Any faceted page needs to be assigned a template

19. Endless possibilities
posts
Find information quickly
Save lives!
Never have to re-build a menu
Editor doesn’t have to worry if it will show up in the right place, it just will
Questions?
Thanks!