[wp-hackers] Page Templates vs Category Templates

[Chip Bennett]

On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 3:55 PM, Haluk Karamete <halukkaramete at gmail.com>wrote:

> with all due respect, Otto, if the web site talks about say breaking
> news from countries all over the world, and it is all about that,
> wouldn't you start with the continents at the top as your main nav and
> be that driven by wp_list_categories?  And with one click, you are
> down to the country names ( which are again the product of cats) .
>

Categories *might* be the best taxonomy to use, or they *might not* be the
best taxonomy. For example, the *type* of news (Politics, Sports, Personal
Interest, etc.) might best use the Category taxonomy - in which case,
Geography might need a custom taxonomy of its own. It's all a matter of how
the site owner chooses to organize his content.

>
> I think you agree that it would make the best sense that we use the
> cats as the main kicker for this type of site and there could be
> hundreds of thousands of site where "noun" based categorizer be it all
> the way at the top or at sub levels are just all over the place.
> whether it is a bad or good practice, it is too late fix/teach/fight
> against etc.
>

I think you don't know Otto very well. :)  But more importantly, I'm quite
certain that he would *not agree*. The choice of taxonomy is a personal
matter that depends entirely upon the organizational scheme determined by
the content owner. There's no right or wrong answer.

>
> but yet, ( going back to the original idea of this thread ), we still
> have no intuitive way and UI to sort out the layout need without
> getting into the php code.
>
> I understand that it is not a matter of if it could be done, and
> rather it's an if it should be done.
> but i thought this was a just slam dunk.


Most ideas - even bona fide "slam dunk" ideas - start out as "Plugin
territory" - both to provide proof-of-concept, and also to test-drive the
functionality, to demonstrate that it works and is useful and popular.  From
my perspective, WordPress core development tends more toward providing
frameworks for extensible functionality (see: custom taxonomies, custom
post_types, action/filter hooks, and the Plugin API).

If you'd really like to get a handle for support for the idea, though, I
would recommend opening up a Trac ticket, describing the functionality you
would like to have.

Chip