How we redesigned the news column system

At the time of the start of work, the company already had a working corporate website on the old version of Yii. The main task was not to create a new website, but to redesign the existing news section and introduce a full-fledged content categorization system.

Before that, the news was actually a single feed. The customer needed a more complex structure that would allow them to group materials by area, create nested headings, and use one news item in several sections at once.

Additionally, it was necessary to keep the main site connected to a separate company magazine, where news was transmitted via RSS.

The new system was supposed to allow:

• create and edit categories through the admin panel;
• assign one news item to several categories at once;
• create nested subsections;
• filter news by categories and years;
• display categories directly in news cards;
• go to the appropriate category by tag;
• save the «All News» section as a shared feed;
• structure sports news in separate areas;
• divide social responsibility materials into thematic subsections;
• send news to a separate magazine website via RSS.

The system of headings and tags

We have redesigned the existing news structure and implemented the rubric in the tag format.

As a result, one publication may simultaneously relate, for example, to the headings «Sports», «Basketball» and «Spartakiad».

At the same time, headings can be added, changed, and deleted directly from the administrative part of the site without the developer’s intervention.

Two levels of filtering have appeared on the news page.:

• by subject headings;
• by year of publication.

When selecting a category, the user immediately receives the corresponding feed of materials, and the year is used as an additional filter.

Nested structure of headings

A hierarchical structure was implemented separately for complex topics.

For example, the Sports section has received its own directions.:

• football;
• basketball;
• volleyball;
• skiing;
• sambo;
• Shooting;
• the Spartakiad.

And the section «Social responsibility» was divided into separate areas, including charity, children’s recreation, ecology and parliamentary activities.

This architecture allows you to develop the content structure further, without being limited to a predefined set of categories.

Updating the news interface

The headings became visible directly in the publication cards and inside the news itself.

Each tag is interactive: the user can click on it and get all the relevant materials.

At the same time, the standard news page continues to show all publications by default, so the new structure has not complicated the basic viewing scenario.

Integration with the magazine

A separate task was to transfer content from the main website to the corporate magazine website.

We have implemented the formation of an RSS file with all the news, in which information is transmitted taking into account the headings and subsections.

This made it possible to preserve the existing mechanism for publishing materials on the journal and at the same time prepare the data for further automatic content separation by areas.

The project was executed directly inside the existing site, without switching to a new CMS or rewriting the project from scratch.

Backend: the old Yii framework
Frontend: JavaScript
Team: 1 full-stack developer

The main difficulty was to integrate the new rubric system into an already working project and the existing news structure, while maintaining the current functionality of the site.

In 2 weeks, we have fully implemented a new news content management system.

As a result:

• The existing news section has received a full-fledged multi-level rubric;
• One publication can be in several thematic sections at once.;
• The categories are managed from the admin panel;
• added filtering by category and year;
• nested subsections for sports and social responsibility have been implemented;
• The categories are displayed directly in the news;
• the transmission of structured news via RSS to a separate magazine website has been implemented;
• The architecture allows you to add new directions without redesigning the entire system.

Thus, instead of a simple publication feed, the company received a managed content structure that can be expanded along with the development of corporate communications.