1

I am considering migrating a nonprofit site to EE. The existing site runs some news articles with an image and copyright attributions to the copyright holder.

  • I created a channel called "Copyright Holders" with no fields other than the title.
  • I created a channel called "News Articles" with a Channel Images field and added a Relationship field to the Copyright Holders channel.

The EE workflow for this seems really clunky. The content creator would first have to review the list of all copyright holders to make sure the one they are adding is not on the list. Then they would have to publish an entry in the Copyright Holders channel if there isn't already the right one. Then, finally, they can publish their entry in "News articles". At the end of it, if they mess up the first step we'll end up with duplicate entries in the dropdown.

If I were writing this as a PHP application it would be trivial to give the user an autocomplete field to enter the copyright holder. After the submit, if they entered an existing (enforced-unique) field from the MySQL table then reference it; if not then create it and reference it. This would be a simple and logical workflow for the content creator and would keep the data clean.

Is there some way to achieve the above in EE?

Or are my choices 1. live with the pain, or 2. write a custom CMS?

Improve this question

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

I'd suggest moving your "Copyright Holders" to a category group. There is no reason not to use categories here from what you describe. The editor can add new categories from within the edit form as they are adding new News Articles. Should do the trick.

Improve this answer
2
  • Thank you Anna_MediaGirl. This is more cumbersome than I was hoping for (because of the need to switch tabs and explicitly add the category rather than auto-completing and silently adding on submit if necessary) but I think you're right that it's the best option available in EE.
    – MDP
    Commented Mar 7, 2013 at 10:45
  • Move the categories to the main tab to make it easier. You can change the layout using Publish Layouts.
    – Anna_MediaGirl ♦
    Commented Mar 7, 2013 at 18:33

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.