Simplify the UI

My idea:

• General:
  • Provide a hook for modules to define metatags that are available. This should be simple, just define the metatag name and maybe an option to control whether it is used on just the homepage or all pages. Then use drupal_alter() to allow other modules to modify the list.
  • Provide a page that lists all of the defined metatags and give a UI to add more or override default ones (kinda like Views et al).
  • Provide a UI to assign settings for each of the values required for the homepage.
  • I'm still happy with using variables to control general settings, maybe also the homepage's metatag values too, but we'd definitely need a structure for handling the other per-object settings.
  • Tokens support.
• Term pages:
  1. Have a way of assigning defaults for all vocabularies.
  2. On each vocab settings page, display each of the metatag strings as they would currently be assigned via the system defaults in #1 above. Provide checkboxes to allow string to be overridden, so that the new string becomes what is used for all terms within that vocab.
  3. On each term edit page, display each of the metatag strings as they would currently be assigned via the system defaults in #1 and the per-vocab defaults in #2 above. Provide checkboxes to allow string to be overridden, so that the new string becomes what is used for that term page.
• Node pages:
  1. Have a way of assigning defaults for all nodes.
  2. On each content type settings page, display each of the metatag strings as they would currently be assigned via the system defaults in #1 above. Provide checkboxes to allow string to be overridden, so that the new string becomes what is used for all nodes of that type.
  3. On each node edit page, display each of the metatag strings as they would currently be assigned via the system defaults in #1 above and the per-content-type defaults in #2 above. Provide checkboxes to allow string to be overridden, so that the new string becomes what is used for that node.
• By-path:
  • Similar to the existing functionality from Nodewords, provide a UI that allows specific terms to be given . The question is, should this override what is assigned elsewhere, or should this be another way of defining a default that is overridden per-node or per-term?

This is very similar to a plan I had built for a rewrite of the Omniture module at Bonnier, before I left in May.

Agreed on the hooks.

Given the differences between D6 and D7, might it just make sense to maintain Nodewords as the legacy D6 application and Metatags as the clean D7 version, and build a migration path between the two? I really don't want to rewrite everything that Nodewords already has for a version of Drupal that can't really do everything we'd like it to (i.e. D6), more just clean it up.

That said, if we do follow the legacy-clean sibling-modules path then I think we should work together on building an overall architecture and then leave the individual implementations separate, i.e. fields for D7 but custom data structures for D6.

With help of page_alter we have unique page-entity object and router items as bundles. Allowing meta-tag as field we could gather metatags from page, page+region - also we could use text and date field-widgets for editing

EDIT: now we have #796658: UI for field formatter settings

Subscribing...

Sounds good.

What are your thoughts on two other things:

• Defining the metatags that are available to be defined.
  • Define e.g. hook_metatags, and include a default hook implementation (metatags_metatags(!)) to list most of the basic ones.
    • Would the hook also get to define a default value for each entity?
  • Just give the user a text field to manually type each one?
• What UI & functionality should be presented for editing the individual entity items, e.g. individual nodes and terms?

I think that metatags should be a field that could be attached to nodes/user/vocabularies - btw we already have UI for assign, defaults for each entity could be assigned in field settings. With this approach we need UI for allowed metatags list and UI for custom pages (maybe context links could help).

{metatag_data} should be used only for custom pages, for all other entities we have field storage.

Since this is an offshoot/proper rewrite of the nodewords module, I'd like to make an architectural suggestion while you are still in the drawing board phase.

I may be coming at this with SEO blinders on, but it seems that attaching meta tags to entities (nodes, taxonomy terms, etc) is a murky abstraction when the purpose of the meta tag is to provide information to search engines, robots, and browsers as to the nature of the resource that is located at a particular URL

So from a data storage standpoint would the data model be better if the meta tags were associated with a URL in the system, and not with the entities they are trying to describe? Im thinking about panels and views specifically and how a node is no longer the only way to access content. One node may be part of a page, but it's sequestered in a panel, or there may be multiple nodes on a page, or there may be *no* nodes on a page and it's simply the output of a view. But the output of that view may be highly dependent upon arguments which may drastically alter the meta description that you would want to display. For example the meta tags for "http://mysite.com/shopping/pets/cat-toys/laser-pointers" should always be the same, regardless of whether that is a url alias to a node, or whether that is a view that takes pets,cat-toys, and laser-pointers as arguments. Either way external visitors should be able to programatically determine that "this is a page about laser pointers for cats". Additionally this would allow assigning meta tags to other as yet undefined resources in drupal, (Im thinking things like RESTful implementations using the Services module, or any module that uses hook_menu to define a path in drupal).

On the other hand, I also recognize that most of the content being generated on sites happens at the node level (user pages being a notable exception), so from a useability perspective it makes sense to enter the meta tag data that pertains to your content on the same form that you use enter your content. (and on taxonomy term pages, vocabulary pages, etc) I would just like to see it somewhere near the path settings, and have an additional administrative screen to add/input modify any other path in the system. (like this module: http://drupal.org/project/nodewords_pagetitle, or this one: http://drupal.org/project/nodewords_bypath).

I guess what Im suggesting is the following:
Table: {metatag_data}
Description: Stores the actual meta tags for individual entities. Should not be exportable since it is not configuration.
Fields:

• Path: The path that this meta tag is associated with (note this is the *external* path, not the system path, unless they happen to be the same)
• Name: The meta tag name.
• Value: The raw meta tag value, can include tokens.
• Options/Data: An optional serialized array with the options for this specific entity's meta tag.

Anyhow, thoughts?