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By lekei on
I have only been at drupal since February and I can write modules and install it in under an hour.... but I still can't get a real site up and running because I just can't get my head around this Taxonomy stuff.
There was a really useful article about how you need to change your thinking to get site structure to work in Drupal but I can't find it if my life depended on it. AND IT DOES! I had a deadline of the first of the month to get a site working...
The problem is that I want to build a "standard" site, with hierarchal structure and menu system (2D using DHTML). I know I need to build a Taxonomy, but I don't understand how to link it to navigation (so I can walk the hierarchy with a little code to build the menus).
Jeremy (Zaza)'s article article series "Making Taxonomy Work My Way" was both helpful and totally confusing because it says that you need to patch 4.5 but the instructions for 4.6 are much simpler (then proceeds to NOT GIVE THEM!!!!).
Bryght's amazing tutorials differentiate between a brochure site and a community site.
The post "Proposal: merge book and taxonomy modules" gives an example of a normal site. Except that it should also have a user forum and a products (catalog-ecommerce) section and in one case, a member bloggs section and a local news section.
Nearest that I can tell, the book module can't be used for first-level pages since navigation ends at the entrance to the book. Although it makes sense for terminus modules (eg. manuals). I am not sure how it integrates with site search, I don't know if the Drupal site had to hack the search in order to have the the manual pages indexed jointly with posts.
Technically, I know that Drupal can do it, But I need to set up a Taxonomy and link it to navigation. And 3 months on, the word Taxonomy still strikes fear in my heart.
PLEASE CAN ANYONE SAVE ME!?
-Don
Comments
With 4.6
I should have mentioned that I am trying to do this with Drupal 4.6.1
why?
Why do you think you need taxonomy to build a hierarchal site? Depending on your site, you don't actually need it. Then again, you might. In any case, I am doing a small write up that I hope to finish by this weekend on a simple alternate way to a 'brochere' type site than the book module. It may help you as I am including a little taxonomy/category item in it.
-sp
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Test site...always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Drupal and Taxes
I don't see how Drupal can work without Taxonomy. It seems to be the core of everything Drupal.
The forums need it, and several other modules don't work without it.
The problem is that I can't figure out how to set the default vocabulary for site navigation, so that menus and breadcrumbs are consistent.
The final step is creating a menu. It's simple enough to populate a javascript 2D menu with a little PHP but where is the navigation hierarchy?
hmmm
I was not clear or complete I guess.
You do not need Taxonomy to have a drupal site, barring moudles that use taxonomy (image and forum). I use image module on some sites, but that's about it. Page, story and blog don't need it. Menu module doesn't need it, though it can link to taxonomies/categories. Path module doesn't need it nor does comments. Poll, tracker, profile, user and upload don't either. Perhaps your sites need it for some additional things, but not every site is your site.
Taxonomy is a great way to catagorize stuff, but a taxonomy is not necessarily a navigation structure. You are mistaking catorizing data and information with a table of contents. They are similiar and bear many of the same characteristics but that does not mean that they are the same thing.
You can use Taxonomy Menu http://drupal.org/node/3724 if you want to force it to conform to a menu. Some more light reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy
I use menu and path to setup a menu hierarchy. You can alias taxonomies and add those to the menu. If you alias with levels then you can probably achieve the effect you are looking for. You can make aliases to items and build out visual level indicators if you want.
item =taxonomy/#
item/sub1 = taxonomy/#,#
item/sub1/sub2 = taxonomy/#,#,#
-sp
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Test site...always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Taxes, Crumbs, and the Path to Enlightenment
Ok so now just when I think that I am nearing the end of the tunnel, you tell me that the light is an oncoming train.
I am trying to set up a site heirarghy. One that I can walk to create a menu in the template, and that will produce consistant navigation and breadcrumbs throughout the site.
I can't find anything about how to do it in 4.6, only 4.5, and that article (see top post) says to ignore it for 4.6 because it's much easier in 4.6
not what I am saying
As to the off site article that says you can't do something, well, I supose you might want to contact the author for clarification.
I am saying don't try and force taxonomy to be something that it may not be, though you can certainly use elements to probably accomplish what you want. A taxonomy is not necessarily a menu. You can build a taxonomy out to look like a menu and use it like one, but that still doesn't make it a menu. Try not to think of taxonomy as a menu, but as a means to organizing data. In any case, see below for one way to do what I think you are asking entirely with Drupal core modules. I am working on a more detailed article in my spare time.
I ended up doing something similiar to what you are doing for a class project... the content is just filler and I am not using clean_url's
http://beta.blkmtn.org/index.php?q=sca/misc/news
The menu on the left is menu module.
The breadcrumbs are reflecting what I put in the URL Aliases (path module)
You can reach the same page with this address here:
http://beta.blkmtn.org/index.php?q=taxonomy/term/21
Click on the news site link (created especially for you) and you will notice that the url changes to the path alias, but the bread crumb has stayed accurate. To change the placement of 'newssite to the end of "Home >> SCA >> misc" would be accomplished through editing the theme. Something that was not a part of my class project.
I went into admin / url alias and set a path alias for "taxonomy/term/21" == "sca/misc/news". I then created a menu item for "taxonomy/term/21" and named it "news sites" as a sub item to misc, which is a sub item of SCA which is a top level item in the Menu named Site.
Is that what you are looking for?
-sp
---------
Test site...always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide