Building the sidebar content on each node

Question

Im going to build a version content heavy site that will contain over 100 of pages. All pages are created in a "Two column layout" the main column contains the Title and body text of the node. And then theres the sidebar, i like the admin of the site to be able to "build" the sidebar for each node.

I like to provide the admin with two types of elements a "text box" and a "image with text box". The admin should then be able to create any number of each box in the sidebar, and they just get listed under each other. These boxes should be attached to the node, and is not general for all nodes.

Basicly im hoping for a solution where they can setup the node, when they visit the node they could hover over the "sidebar" region and in the dropdown select "add textbox" -> "add image box" and those teasers get assigned only to the specific node

It should be very intuitive as the admin is not very techinical (for example they wont be able to create views etc) so im hoping for a simple solution, please advice me :)

Answer 1

There probably is a better solution, but this is what I thought of.

• Make two new content type of 'sidebar-block-text' and 'sidebar-block-image'. And in those content types add a node (or entity) reference field. (Make sure to use the same field, so create it once, and for the other content type choose it from existing fields!)

• Build a view-block.

  • Let it display the whole rendered node.
  • Add a contextual filter of the current node id and link it to the reference field.

• Place the block in the template sidebar region.

All the administrator will have to do is to add a new piece of content (sidebar-block-text or -image) and reference it to the 'parent node'.