Proposal: merge book and taxonomy modules

Jeremy I think your proposal is good.

I am myself in the process of setting up the structure of a site and have been going through many of the speculations that you mention. I currently use both the taxonomy system and books.

But when using a sitemap like sitemenu or sitemap it is clear that they do not take into consideration the book hierarchies. For now I have solved this by having direct handcoded links to about and 'press room' sections in books at the top over the sitemap itself, where as individual nodes will appear in the sitemap because the are also termed.

Best regards,
Lennart

at first glance this sounds like a proposal worth exploring. this category module (il like that name too) can happily live in Contrib while it matures. taxonomy.module is not special, any other module can use the nodeapi hooks that it uses.

you will likely need to modify a theme in order to display category links, but thats easy to do. just include a suggested node.tpl.php along with your module.

your writing indicates that you've thought (and coded) about these problems for a while. I appreciate that, and look forward to your contributions.

Hello Jaza,

I am surprised that such a useful proposal has received very few comments, but I think you can be very encouraged by Moshe's reply.

Having spent the last several months in trial and error to get this kind of functionality, I want this so badly that I am even willing to donate a bit of money- this and testing the would-be module are the only ways I can help.

All the best.

This is what clipper.module wants to become when it grows up.
My plans for this was to make it a "general outlines" for drupal. The newt step, nideed was to add book paths (prev next) to them. Feel free to send in patches for that module!

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Next time, please consider filing a support request.

[Bèr Kessels | Drupal services www.webschuur.com]

I have been struggling off-and-on for 2 months (virtually full time this last week) trying to understand how to make a real-world, working web site using Drupal. Not being a newbie to CMS, PHP, web site development, mySQL, etc., I recognized the power of Drupal (after looking at over 50 CMS choices) but just couldn't get it!

Without your article series "Making Taxonomy Work My Way" and your helpful post to another perplexed user explaining that the whole "categories" vs. "taxonomy" terminology debacle is just an attempt at making things less confusing that went horribly wrong, I might still be lost.

This proposal would make Drupal work the way I presumed that it did. I don't care who writes the code as long as it works, but I hope YOU write the documentation so it doesn't take a month to figure out how to GET it to work.

It is that presumption, that makes Drupal so hard to use. Every web site that I have ever developed, or have on the books uses the structure you show. I was beginning to think that I needed to make two web separate sites that link to each other!

-Don

Jeremy,

This is a fantastic proposal, imho. You've very well explained something I've been trying to verbalise for awhile. I've been looking for awhile for a project or piece of work on Drupal to put my hat in and lend a hand. I'd like to help out with this in any way, I think it's a great idea and will be of great use toeveryone who uses Drupal.

Let me know how I can help,
cheers,
Andrew

Hi Jeremy,

It seems there is a strong support for your ideas- I bet many more have been hurt from the RSI that figuring out drupal's taxonomy and hierarchical system gave them;-)

Let us know if and when you plan to start coding or if there is anything we can do to help you.

I put a kludge together to deal with this problem for a few sites. I called the module sections (I know there is another one called that), which could have content assigned to each section (base on node types, vocabularies, terms or actual nodes as well as paths).

It was a pain to program, but it does what I needed. (You can see it in action at http://www.ekostv.com)

I wish I had had your insight when I began development with that module. Your idea would have been much much more elegant.

When it came to remaking my own site (http://www.pbent.com) I didn't want to use the sections module since I wasn't really happy with the way the menu fits with the sections module. I wanted something that would be easier to manage and would use only "standard" drupal functions. I found it quite challenging to make it do what I wanted (which was sooooo simple).

Sounds like your idea would suit my site perfectly. I would be happy to help develop this change if you'd have me.

Drupal let's you do a lot. I can build your proposed site with Page, Menu, Story, Path and taxonomy modules. In fact, I used blog module instead of story module for a school project that is remarkably similiar. http://beta.blkmtn.org

This is not to say that your solution or others won't help, I am just saying that the solution is not always more code :), perhaps more effort on setup guides. I wish I had time to have this already written up, but I haven't. Maybe in a week I will have something for you. Then again, maybe you will have a module finsihed by then.

-sp
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Test site...always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

Jeremy,

To start I really like the way you presented your proposal. It's like you have taken my jumbled thinking about creating a back-end structure for Drupal and translated it into this proposal.

After testing Drupal and other CMSs for several months I have really started to like the way Drupal does things compared to the other open-source solutions out there. The two main packages I have been working with, Drupal and Xaraya both have confusing, abstract, and partially incomplete ways of creating a back-end structure for a website. Recently I have dropped consideration for Xaraya because of its way of categorizing content, and navigating through the classification. With Xaraya I wasn't able to navigate through my categories the way I wanted because their navigation allows for 1 content type. I would have to add a navigation block for each content-type. Also Xaraya is so abstract in its design that the learning curve is too steep for people other than full-time web developers.

Getting Xaraya out of the picture, I came back to Drupal. Drupal is alot easier to start learning, and easy for non-web-developers to use. But when actually sitting down and thinking of how to structure a site I was jumbling between the book and taxonomy modules as the way to structure my content. Realizing that I needed functionality from both.

Your module is what drupal needs, and if it works like you presented, then it should be considered as a core module. But before we get to that part, a lot needs to be done and I am willing to help with development/testing in anyway I can.

Somethings I would like to see:
When selecting a category it will show a list of sub-categories (if any) then a list of all content under the category which would include content tagged with the sub-categories. This way when a user clicks on a sub-category it would filter out all other content leaving what was tagged with the sub-category.

Also block navigation. I like the way the admin menu and book navigation works in Drupal and the breadcumbs produced. I would like to be able to navigate through my categories in a hieracial structured form with the ability to apply weights to vocabs and terms to control their position in the block navigation. I know this sounds just like the book navigation, but with using categories you could tag content with mulitple terms so you could get to the same content with multiple routes through the navigation without the need for redundant content.

Good work so far!
Eric

I've been trying out Drupal as a possible replacement for my current website...which is primarily static pages in a hierarchical structure.

My goals in using some sort of CMS are:
- wiki-like way to write simple pages (e.g. textile module)
- easier to manage navigation by defining some categories and placing pages into those categories - i.e. hierarchical structure
- access control for some pages
- allow visitors to post comments on pages
- make L&F changes in one place (themes)
- upload images and easily place links/thumbnails in pages with links to page with full-size image
- "what's new" pages for some sections with blog-like (chronological) listings of pages
- friendly URLs

From what I've read, Drupal seems to fit the bill. Unfortunately, everything thing I try results in blog-like pages. I've read that Drupal can do evernthing I want, but needs to be wrestled out of the blog-centric default configuration.

Your article sounds like it will do most of what I want. I look forward to giving it a try!

Your comments about corporate sites really hit home, too. As I've been looking at Drupal, I've been wondering if it would make sense for our corporate site. Without an easy way to define the hiearchy, I doubt I could sell it. But with it, and some time from a themes guru to get emulate our current look, I think they might buy into it!

I am currently considering what content management system to use for my site, which currently consists of static HTML. I heard that Drupal was the best open source CMS out there, so I installed it on localhost to try it out. I am very impressed by its elegancy and completeness.

However, I wanted to do a simple hierarchy of pages with friendly URLs and breadcrumbs. I read about taxonomies and books, but it just seemed very complicated. I thought about looking elsewhere, but then I found your suggestion. I am convinced that it will cover my needs perfectly.

If you and other PHP-gurus code this, Drupal will definitely be my choice. I look forward to see a beta.

Niels

a third hierarchy that some site builders are employing is the hook_menu system. see http://www.ent.iastate.edu/pest/cornborer/manage. matt westgate built this site and uses menu system like below

  // The root menu item id of the submenu you want to display.
  $pid = 27;
  $mid = menu_get_active_nontask_item();

  $parents = _menu_get_active_trail();

  if (in_array($pid, $parents)) {
   // We want to always show the second hierarchy of navigation.
   if (count($parents) > 1) {
      $mid = $parents[1];
    }
    return theme('menu_tree', $mid);
  }

The authors on the site use the new "menu on the fly" in HEAD to add pages to the nav

And a 4th hierarchy system in core drupal is the comment threading. This system is very fast and clever. It is well documented in comment.module code.

Obviously, it would be great to consolidate these hierarchy models.

What you're proposing sounds great, so I wouldn't want to burden you with anything extra, but have you considered how it could relate to the news aggregrator. I've never exactly understood why (historical reason? technical reason?) but it has its own set of categories.

From my point of view it would obvioulsy be better if there was just one set. At the moment I have two seperate but identical sets of categories, one for nodes and one for news feed items.

If it was possible for the categories.module to be used for classifying news feeds that would just be ideal....?

The other alternative, of course, is to get the news feed items treated as normal nodes and so be able to be classifed into the same set of categories. I know there are modules that can do this and that work is going on to improve the way they work - there's discussion of this at http://drupal.org/node/18498.

Hi Jeremy, what you're proposing sounds very interesting. I'm a newbie to drupal having discounted most php cms systems for their stupid navigation.

I'm happy with the principles of the current taxonomy module but what I want to be able to do is give each term an index page so the crumb trail actually makes sense without users being presented with a daft A-Z list of nodes.

I'd like the index pages to be completely customizable, a node in their own right I guess.

Is this something the category module would be able to do? I confess I've got a bit confused reading through all the comments.

I'd be interested to hear how things are going with the module. I'm very happy to help with any beta testing.

Jeremy, et al...This is definitely a much-needed capability. I'm evaluating Drupal as a potential new CMS for IT Conversations, which will be quite hierarchical: Channels, Series, Programs, Components. I've had the same frustration with the existing modules and nodetypes: not even close. I'll also be very interested to see how we can wire this into a revived workflow module. My understanding is that the current workflow module (which doesn't work with the current rev of Drupal) is in need of some "love." FYI, I'm fleshing out requirements for the new IT Conversations CMS here.

Doug Kaye, Executive Producer
IT Conversations

After spending ten or so hours wondering if I really was as dumb as a sack of hammers, I found this post and realized, oh no, it's just that Drupal can't do what I took for granted any CMS could -- make static pages and sub-pages. This module sounds great. I'm just sort of shocked it wasn't part of the version 1.0 release of Drupal.

But I guess Drupal has been developed more for blog type sites and not for brochure type sites.

* sigh *

Good luck! Hope it's done in time for me to use it instead of rolling my own CMS again.

Ocasionally found this topic. Great. Respect flyout 2 Jeremy, we need this module. I've read your 'making taxonomy work my way' yesterday, it is wonderful.

Currently I'm trying to create Drupal package that will be easy to use for dummies, and I've encountered the problem.
http://drupal.org/node/31983

I think coding such a mod will take much time, and there will be not two ways to categorize content. There will be three.

Surely categories.module should be created in 2000, for Drupal 1.0, instead of taxonomy - and now may be we would be talking "How can I have multiple parents for my node?" :)

I'm a bit disappointed with Drupal now - and it's after four months of euphoria, during which I was sure that Drupal can easily drive-all-sites-in-the-world-in-the-best-way. I've spended much time exploring Drupal, and now I'm tired a bit, and I don't want! to go away, exploring Xaraya, or Xoops, or another super-mega-cms with clear and simple categories. :) I like Drupal, and I want to work with Drupal developing my sites.

Jeremy, you created this topic 3 months ago - and still no category.module in projects :( You found another good solution?
we need many-many hours to create the module ...

Every coder searches the easy way :)

That's why my idea is to patch taxonomy.module so we can create a "link" term-to-node, and the node linked to term will serve as index.html in static HTML site (now it can be partly done by term description, but we can't use search for that, and many other disadvantages, I don't want to repeat it again, it is clear for everybody here)

- and with the solution where we can define main vocabularies that will serve as categories for breadcrumbs (like you way with vocabulary weight, but may be a bit more flexible) we'll get the categories.

What do you think about this?

RussianWebStudio: improving the web

+1 for this proposal
I'd decided to avoid book due to its' rigid hierarchy. The site we need to build will grow to over a 1000 pages and the structure has to expand and adapt as it grows. I concluded using taxonomy and context and incorporating your breadcrumbs patches (when a stable .8.2 crm/mm/og CS is available) would do the job but this proposal is much more straightforward. Minimizing the number of vocabularies and terms will be important to avoid overwhelming users. We will be using organic groups and I would like each group to have a dedicated vocabulary they can use to organize content within the group. Our groups are for policy development and they have proposals, resolutions, backgrounders etc. as well as forums as input and policy papers as output. Different groups will want to structure content in diverse ways.
Sometimes I don't know whether to laugh or cry at all the available permutations in Drupal ;)

Neil

I share the frustrations with Drupal on this need for a more complete heirarchical structure. I think your proposal is excellent! I look forward to seeing it become a reality.

Drupal's greatest weakness at the moment, for my needs, is lack of node/user level access control.

As I'm sure someone will be quick to point out, the taxonomy_access.module provides this functionality at the term level but the menu module ignores taxonomy access when displaying menu items rendering the addon module irrelevant.

My clients invariably require some content to be restricted to certain users. My current client needs to restrict sets of content to single users. To accomplish this he would have to do the following for every user.

1. Create a new role for that single user (not really viable)
2. Create a new taxonomony term for that user's content
3. Assign access for the new term to the new role

All this will provide the necessary access control, but still doesn't provide for a hierarchical menu. Because both the book module and the menu module do not use taxonomy but are independant it is currently impossible to provide a dynamic menu for access controlled content (as far as I am aware).

This is partially off-topic but demonstrates that there is more need to consolidate the taxonomy and structure of content than just for menu purposes. Actually, it may be that using taxonomy for access control in the example above is not the best solution but it is a workable solution for many other cases.

The fact that there are multiple ways (e.g., book module, menu, menu_otf, taxonomy_context) to provide a menu for structured content is, perhaps, an advantage for the power user but is extremely confusing for new users. Structured, access controlled content needs to be given significantly more focus if Drupal wants to play in the CMS arena and not be considered just another blog software.

I'm extremely new to using Drupal. I've put about 30 hours of work into Drupal over the past 2 two days and 90% of my frustrations have went into the problems that this plugin should fix. The other 80% is just my ignorance.

I would imagine that every single site that I've ever built and ever will build under the current internet system will use a combination of taxonomy and the book system.

This sounds brilliant to me. When can we expect a release?

Brandon Drury

Dear Mr.

One more thing concerning your proposal.

Creating a hierarchical menu for each submitting post gives an over fragmented book (as Drupal ones) that limit accessibility of information. Futhermore, a long post is problematic to edit directly using drupal form (I supposed you are well organised to write your own long proposal).

Thus, some CMS and the wikis use multiple posts to compose a page (as forum or comment) with only one menu address.

This could be add to your proposal. Currently this is missing

Sincerely