We've been trying to implement a site architecture that has a consistent menu, breadcrumb and path structure for all pages in the site.
This is easy for basic pages since the path can be set using the page's menu position (using pathauto), as can the breadcrumb.
eg: site.com/a-page/b-page
However, we also have 'articles' which appear in lists on certain pages, using certain tags.
The issue comes in preserving the consistent menu location (but no menu item), URL and breadcrumb for these articles whilst keeping the system easy to maintain.
eg: site.com/a-page/b-page/article-1 eg: site.com/a-page/b-page/article-2
(Most Drupal sites seem to just give up and use site.com/article-title ?)
Not all the articles are just 'news' so we don't want to just force the path to one format option using pathauto.
One solution we've identified for these articles is:
Add a field to the taxonomy for 'path to parent' which would contain the path to whatever page the articles are listed on (eg: a-page/b-page/) and then pathauto could then use this to build a relevant path to the content. Then create a Context for each term which sets the Breadcrumb and Menu trail to the correct location.
However, this does not seem very easy to maintain?
Does anyone know of a better solution?