I need to make a flexible newsletter template for my editors based on this type of layout:
hidden link
I plan to use hidden link for the framework
The newsletter will be divided into smaller sections or modules like:
1. One large image with headline and excerpt
2. One image – for ads (top ad and wide ad)
3. Small news story with two ads
4. One sponsor news story with two ads
5. Two news stories
The ads need to be sorted randomly (and use all the published ads in three different categories) and the news needs to sorted chronology (from an other post category).
Hopefully I can use toolset for this?
The ads need to be sorted randomly (and use all the published ads in three different categories)
I'm a bit concerned by this. It sounds like you have modules that are somewhat repetitive. So we would consider that module one "item" in a View, so to speak, possibly by looping over some custom post type. It's certainly possible to make sure that each "item" is unique, and random, and all published items are displayed. But if you need to loop over other items (like ads) within the main item, then you need another nested View. This is where things get complicated.
At that point, your nested ad Views within each main item are disassociated with one another, so it's not possible to make the entire set of ads appear at random without possible duplicates. Each instance of the ad View will produce its own set of random results, regardless of the results in the other nested ad Views on the page. It's not possible to break up the results of a View and show them in different areas.
In order to accomplish what you're looking for, you'll need to manually associate repeating elements within a module to that module somehow. That could be by using a custom field or taxonomy term. But without that manual association, I'm not sure there will be a good way to ensure that all the elements required get applied to the page.
Let me know if I have misunderstood what you're trying to accomplish.
