How can I rephrase compound sentences to make them simpler?

Following Martha's advise I am splitting up a question Compound sentences, the punctuation and mooore.

Consider the following sentence:

One of the items that needed a further development was a research on child nodes of a story representing its sub categories being updated the moment the list of sub categories is changed through edit page for stories.

While I indeed wanted to practice compound sentences (see a question Constructing compound sentences), another reason why this sentence is so complex is that I don't know how to split it into smaller parts. Could you help me with it?

If you need the context please read a post from the second link.

I am not a native speaker, so there will sure be mistakes, but I would write:

One of the items that needed more work was research on story child nodes updating. The child nodes represent story sub categories and should be automatically updated when the list of sub categories is changed on the story edit page.

An answer is already accepted, but let me try:

One item that needed further development was updating the child nodes of a story. These nodes, representing the story's subcategories, must be updated the moment the list of subcategories is changed via the edit page for stories.