Articles database: click author/category name to see more

[Meddysong]

I need to produce an articles database as a digital version of our magazine. It dates back 114 years and nearly 1000 issues, so I've got my work cut out!

I know how I'm going to handle it:

- Create a database

- Create a category for each issue

- Create individual articles within that category to represent the articles which were in the issue

I also know that I could create fields in order to indicate the author's name and column name (ie 'opinions', 'book reviews').

I know I could filter by fields to show other records in that category with the same values. What I don't know how to implement is functionality to do this including articles from other categories which share the same field value. Ideally, I'd like it so that if you click on the author's name, you get to see all articles within the database which were written by the same author. Similarly for columns.

It seems to me that I'm looking to replicate the behaviour of tags. Unfortunately, I can see a flaw; I only want to limit the results displayed to this database, not the whole site. And ideally I wouldn't like to have the article tagged with "john smith", "edward jones", "opinion" but instead look like fields, where the author's name is shown under a heading, as is the column.

I don't know whether this is doable but I suppose I could tag AND create these fields. The field would be used for presentation, the tags for searching. Or is there another way?

Is it possible to combine tags and prefixes to narrow down results when searching? Is it possible to click a prefix "my magazine" and a tag "john smith" to return only content items which contain both that prefix and tag, leaving alone the content items tagged "john smith" elsewhere in the community?

Does anybody have an ideas how to replicate this functionality? I seem to recall some talk a few years ago about bring back a feature from IPS3 which would allow cross-referencing. Is that what I should use?

[Meddysong]

9 minutes ago, Meddysong said:

Is it possible to combine tags and prefixes to narrow down results when searching? Is it possible to click a prefix "my magazine" and a tag "john smith" to return only content items which contain both that prefix and tag, leaving alone the content items tagged "john smith" elsewhere in the community?

Tested. It doesn't work like that, unfortunately.

[opentype]

Maybe don’t use categories at all? Then you don’t have the problem of connecting records across categories. You limit all your selections to filters within one category, including the issue number. 

[Meddysong]

Oh, that's a clever idea. I think too many people would criticise it, not understanding why it's set up like that but it's a good example of thinking outside the box.

I suppose it's not the end of the world if I don't have this functionality. Alternatively, I could tailor the tags so to read 'author: john smith', 'author: bill jones', 'column: opinion' etc.