Multiple Content Types on One Site – all dynamic, all need to be RSS friendly

Heylos everyone! Long time no see and I hope everyone’s been having fun with WordPress! ??

Recently encountered a situation in regards to how to structure a specific sort of website within the realm and boundaries of WordPress and not knowing how best to tackle the situation, I decided to come back here for some advice.

Please and thank you in advance and here’s the situation:

I have a website whose content can be classified into multiple types – blog posts (main blog, changing content), image gallery (portfolio, changing content), image and blog gallery (project, changing content), and static pages.

The navigation for the site is something like this:

Home (static), About (static), Portfolio (static, but sublinks go to dynamically changing content), Project (static, but sublinks go to dynamically changing content), Blog (dynamically changing content)

Previously, I would have either 1) used custom post types for the Portfolio and Project content if RSS was not a necessary thing, or 2) used categories and used filters to filter the appearances of certain category posts in the blog and just use the category links as the links for the Portfolio and Project.

However, RSS is a necessary thing in this new situation as the Portfolio and Project contain content that is to change and update over time and there is a desire to have it compatible with an RSS feed.

If I used the ‘post type method’, I guess I could format an RSS feed specifically for it, but after reading a lot on the web regarding post types and dynamic content and feeding them etc, it seems like that might not be a great route to go. And to be honest, the dynamic content IS a part of the overall site; it’s just… separated into its own section – I hesitate at the word Page – away from the Blog.

In considering this, I was thinking that the ‘categories method’ would work best, but then I run into the problem where I have to use:

https://samplesite.com/category/portfolio/portfolio-subcategory/portfolio-post

as the URL for the page of say Portfolio work where the URL that is most desired is:

https://samplesite.com/portfolio/portfolio-subcategory/portfolio-post

I COULD do a mod rewrite on my .htaccess file for removing the ‘category’ bit…

but showing ‘category’ is perfectly fine for the blog. Just… not for the Portfolio or Project.

I suppose I could tweak that mod rewrite, but I’m not sure how and I’m not sure how good of an idea that would be.

All in all, this situation sort of translates into, “How can I display a whole category of dynamically changing content on its own custom Page which is still content-RSS-friendly,” which I CAN… sort of do…

but then I run into the issue where the RSS feed is for that Page’s COMMENTS (kind of makes sense, since Pages are meant to be static save for the one you use for the Blog page) and not the dynamic CONTENT displayed IN that Page.

That said, any recommendations and why (and instructions, please, or a link to said instructions)?

(And, please, NO to gallery-type plugins; I’ve used several in the past and my database has hated me for it. I’m sure they have their place as a lot of people love them, but I would rather be able to manage this as ‘vanilla’ as possible to ensure compatibility moving forward and not having to rely on someone else’s work every time an update happens.)

Again, thanks in advance!