Please see the attached mockup…
Each element in the sidebar (e.g., Communications) will probably have to be a Page. I’m aiming for maximum flexibility.
I am using Epik (a Genesis child theme).
I am trying to avoid having the people who will be creating the content for this site needing to know HTML/CSS so I was hoping to make the Feature Details (see below) in the attached mockup be widgets or something similar. But it seems that Widgets that are created in functions.php are shared site-wide so I would have to create the widget spots for each page in advance. I suppose I could go hog-wild and make like 10 of them for each Feature, but that doesn’t answer the flexibility goal because new Features would not be automatically supported.
I was planning on using a Custom Post Type for each Feature Detail, probably with Categories for SUM/REC, HS/MS, and so on (market segment served by a particular feature) and Tags for things like Communications (the items in the sidebar menu). Maybe the reverse makes more sense?
It’s possible that I could load the Feature Details into the template based on the Category of the Page (i.e., if the Category of the Page is “Communications” load all the Feature Detail CPT Posts with the Tag or Category of the same name.
How would you go about doing this?
1 Answer
Custom Archive Page
What you’re describing is a custom archive page.
https://www.google.com/search?q=custom+archive+page
https://codex.wordpress.org/Creating_an_Archive_Index
Child Theme
Forget widgetised areas. They’re not necessary based on what you described. Simply fork (copy and manipulate) your archives template page by using using a child theme rather than directly editing the parent theme (edits won’t survive theme updates).
https://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes
Featured Posts
Ensure your site easily handles featured posts:
Constrain by Category
E.g. Communications
Finally, constrain your post loop by category:
https://www.google.com/search?q=wordpress+list+posts+by+category
