Drupal best way to render content type data and meta-data

Question

I am new to Drupal and struggling on the best approach to choose, I have several questions which are all related to my approach.

Let say I have a content type "Rooms" and would like to create 2 pages: 1 for listing the rooms and one per room (let's call that one Room A), plus I would like to add some additionnal data for the page listing rooms. Of course I need menu item when being on page "Rooms" but still need the item to be active when on page Room A.

Finally, the page Rooms not only list the room's content type but also display some static blocks which both has and has no relationship to the Room content type.Eg: an image's banner with a small description.

After doing some research, I have found several approach to do this:

1. Have a taxonomy "Rooms" with no terms and in which I classify all my rooms and add additional field for data specific such as my banner picture. I then create a basic page which I theme to call my blocks and taxonomies. The menu active trail issue is realized by taxonomy-menu trail.

Pro: it works. Cons: the logic bothers me, the purpose of taxonomy is more like a tagging system rather. Therefore I have to tag my content's instance each per each

1. I create a new content type "Banner" in which I add new fields, an image, a description... Using Node Hierarchy menu, I create a parent relationship for a basic page to a room content type, on that basic page i display all my block...

So, OK the content type is not a page it's an abstract of fields, but what if I want to display in the most efficient way data that are on higher level of abstraction of the content type and that are specific to that content type ?

What's your opinion ?

Answer 1

If I have understood well, here is what I would do:

• Create a content type "Room", with specific fields and configuration (I guess you already did that).
• Create several nodes of type "Room", one by actual room.
• Create a View (using Views module) to display a list of all my nodes of type "Room" (I can tell you more about that if you need it) and where you can access the rooms page automatically. Of course, you can create a menu item in the same time. Very easy.
• Create a custom static block with the banner, text, or whatever you want to be displayed on your View page.
• Configure the block to be displayed only on your View page (path/to/your/view).

This is how I would have do that if I had to. I don't know if there is a better way but it seems quite logic and simple to me.

I hope it was the answer you wanted!

EDIT: I just remember the active menu item thing. I did that once in a project, it is a bit tricky but I can explain to you my method.