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By WorldFallz on
Ok, I'm new, and thoroughly confused, I admit it. This may seem like an insanely ridiculous question, but I just can't seem to wrap my brain around it.
On a simple basic "Page", you can have multiple categories each with their own drop down box. You can also have multiple cck_taxonomy fields also each with their own drop down box and that match the categories.
Other than the fact that the Category approach is hard coded with the name "Categories" and the drop down labels are hard coded with the category name, what's the difference between the two approaches? Pros? Cons? What is my oh so slow brain missing?
BTW, I just love drupal-- it's my new obsession. ;-)
Comments
This is something that can
This is something that can only get better in the next versions.
The pros of cck_taxonomy is that it is a much wanted feature, so i'm sure the devs will get it right.
The cons is that these modules are relatively new, because it wasn't as easy as it sounds.
thanks...
for the reply. But I'm still not "getting" what the difference is and why to choose one way over the other.
It is not really a choice,
It is not really a choice, the default categories fieldset is obsolete and should dissapear.
Now that cck is widely used, there's the need to treat categories like just another field.
For example, i have a site with categories for brand, model and city, and cck fields for maker and address, etc. so there's no sense having categories separately.
It should be a fieldset for product (brand, model, maker, price, etc.) and contact (name, address, city, etc.)
But i can't hide the default fieldset with categories because until recently there was no way to modify it.
IS taxonomy synonymous with category in 5?
Like the poster, I am confused over taxonomy, category and CCK.
There are a few questions here, I hope someone can answer them specifically, I'm sure others share the confusion.
In my first week on Drupal I got a site up (www.morethanoil.com) and have some good menu functions built automatically from taxonomy - but I simply used the Categories function in admin, created vocabularries and terms + a module or two.
1>>The Categories section of Dripal 5 starts with commentary: suggesting that "Categories" is taxonomy???
However, my main reason for setting out the way I have is because I need content providers to categorise from structured lists (not freetag). But when adding content the tagging looked ugly (the list unstructured is long) so I tested taxonomy_super_select, which worked to a degree, was better at least. However whn I completed my vocab's taxonomy_super_select had only picked up 5% of my lists...(the others went back to the long list format) when I searched for a reason for that I found only unresolved stories of 'categories' clashing with menus and another module: CCK Taxonomy Super Select Ultra which claims to do what I need for both CCK and Categories.
I downloaded this module and it says it is dependent upon the 'content' module - WHat is this? I assume it's CCK. I have not implemented the module because I don't understand the relationships between these three things yet?
Q2: Is 'Content' module CCK?
Q3: CCK appears to be a module with a whole other body of logic and code, if I add it will it slow my site - even if I only use it for the above function?
Q4: I am not using Views yet, is there any use for CCK without VIews?
Q5: When I read about categories 'module' I see talk of 'containers', but I haven't come across them. Is this because the taxonomy, vocab I am adding in admin is something else called categories?
Q6: Should I abandon 'Categories'? If so, how do I get my taxonomy over to CCK?
A lot of questions I realise, any help would be greatly appreciated.
Regards
Zaph
Q1: The Categories section
Yes, both words are basically compatible.
Note that Taxonomies/Categories further divide in vocabs and terms, so categories usually refer to terms.
There's a boatload of modules that improve taxonomy, so be sure to review and test them before choosing one.
Since some of them are under development it'd be a bit hard to get it pretty, but can be done.
Yes, CCK is a short word for content.module but also the many sub-modules depending on it.
It's a must have, so you can activate it safely.
No, it won't slow a site unless you go into special usage of it.
For example, if you use the views ui to add lots of fields you may have to optimize the view.
Yes, it is the building block of many other modules.
Standalone, you can create your own content types for new kind of nodes.
Views is widely used too, but not yet included in core.
You capture the data in nodes using CCK content types.
Afterwards you can show and format that data in several ways, like views or the contemplate.module
That's from category.module, which is a separate module.
It can make vocabs and terms into nodes, and nodes into vocabs and terms.
So vocabs are called containers and terms are called categories.
In general, you can call terms "categories", when speaking of categorized content.
The meaning of "taxonomy" is preferred because it is broader than categorized content.
No, taxonomy and CCK are the building blocks of drupal.
cck is used to make nodes and taxonomy to categorize them.
Progress + thank you
Agustin, thank you for the detailed and considered reply.
I have cleared up a few things in my head - Drupal is great but ending up with a search page that loads a tab saying Category, with a section underneath listing categories, and under that the word category and a seperate module called category which says it screws up menus... eek!
1. I am OK with Taxonomies/Categorie(S) further dividing into vocabs and terms, so categories usually refer to terms. I have set up a good structure and auto menus based on that.
2. I have been careful thanks to good advice. The only missing part for me is a better way for a content provider to 'tag' the preset taxonomy. Currently it comes up in ugly long lists. I tried Taxonomy Super Select, but it only formatted the first vocabulary of 7 (and not too prettily either).
I setup CCK Taxonomy Super Select Ultra and all required CCK modules and nothing happens at all. I've asked for help but no response in the 5 days so far.
Any suggestions?
3. Thanks. I've added CCK.
4.
4a: This is conceptually unclear to me. I capture what? Do you mean I find data, like in a search, which then displays? If so doesn't the search do this anyhow?
4b: If I create a story, tag it with some taxonomy, publish it, what is CCK's role?
5. I will steer well clear of "category.module" - but I wish it didn't exist I wasted 2 days reading about it thinking it was what came with Drupal default and controlled taxonomy. It should be renamed.
6. (like 4b)
By this, do you mean programmers write code using CCK to, for example, enable me to add content through a story? Then I wouldn't be directly accessing CCK, right?
Again,
any time you have on these points is greatly appreciated.
Regards
Zaph www.morethanoil.com
Yes, you are right, the
Yes, you are right, the proper name is "create content" not capture data.
Story is a "content type", like Page, Book and Image.
A "node type" is its content type.
Speaking of content types (like Story) and CCK is basically the same thing.
CCK let you add "fields" (input fields) to Story and any other content type.
But most important, it let you create custom content types.
You can edit the Story type to your liking. You'll see the options in the admin/content/types page.
See http://drupal.org/node/21951 for a glossary.
But the reason for multiple words for things is because the strength of drupal modules to interact with each other.
You have the basic things like categories and types and you improve the functionality with modules.
This ends the general concept that modules are packaged and complete applications,
in drupal they are more like the building blocks of a CMS.
The same can be said of Views, so you'll find it does a basic thing that can be expanded with a boatload of functions.
Hey thanks
Much appreciated -- anyone else have points to add - this could be an educational thread for many new druplers... & any tips on better tagging (selection of terms while adding content)
Best
Zaph
yes... thank you
The posts above have helped my understanding considerably. I think a lot of the confusion for newbies stems from so many similar words used to refer to sometimes similar and sometimes very different things. One thing I got hung up on for a long time at the very beginning was the interchangeability of taxonomy and categories. I couldn't quite "get" how they were being used and distinguished in drupal. I kept reading about taxonomy and seeing all sorts of modules for it, but then in the UI the word "categories" was used. Then there are the words "terms" and "vocabularies" to add more confusion.
The way I've come to understand it now is that "taxonomy" is the entire system of classification, "vocabularies" are the root level of the taxonomy for a site, and "terms" are the individual words underneath each vocabulary.
Visually, I see it like this:
The word "category", besides being used in the UI instead of taxonomy, seems to be used to refer to any or all of these levels at any given time depending on the context.
The actual "category.module" is yet another confounding piece of the puzzle and poorly named IMHO. I don't yet know anything about how contributed modules are managed, but the names of modules should not be allowed to 1) duplicate core functionality names or 2) duplicate each other's names (unless of course they address the exact same functionality and then there should be a standard naming convention (or perhaps numbering) to distinguish between them).
When perusing the modules, I had the impression catgory.module was a "must have" for categorization, and so installed it, but then became immediately confused when I had two different admin areas named "categories"-- and no clue which was which or what they should be used for. Meanwhile, the genuine "must have" CCK, never really caught my attention until much later.
And I didn't approach this in a haphazard way. When I first found drupal, the first thing I did was read virtually all the handbooks (left out the developing for drupal ones for now). Unfortunately, I had left the very good "drupal cookbook" for last because I had mistakenly understood by the title that it was more for intermediate users instead of a beginners "how-to" book. I read alot of stuff in the forums also. Then I went through the contributed modules one by one making notes of what I might use them for (actually, I ended up going over that list several times). I even read the code of various modules trying to figure out what they did because the documentation was incomplete or missing entirely. And all throughout were sprinkled tons of google and drupal.org searches.
Now, it's definitely a possibility that I'm just slow. But I was a human factors/interface designer who morphed into a process engineer/technical writer and then into a web site builder/technical writer. For a long time it was my job to take new technology, understand it, and document it for the average-joe masses.
I've always been an amateur coder though-- from the hey day of the original "basic" and PL/1 all the way through visual basic/C/javascript/ and the .net variants up till now with PHP/Python/Ruby. I say amateur because I never worked as a coder on production software, but I have always written programs to get various things done in the course of my various jobs (product demos, data analysis, data entry, running a lab, etc.). I also learned to build websites, in days when they were still text based, by hand coding HTML in notepad.
I say all this to make the point that although I'm not a developer I AM a technical person (i'm not just someone who can operate the timer on a vcr so I think i can build a website) and drupal brought me to my knees. I spent untold hours trying to understand it and figure out how to use it for my project-- more than any other new technology I've come across. Now that I'm starting to "get it", its actually not that bad. I still have some nagging "I just don't get it" issues (hence this post), but for the most part I'm able to function.
joomla isn't anywhere near as full featured or flexible as drupal, but when non-developer types ask me to recommend a CMS I have to recommend joomla (unless there is a specific function they need that joomla can't provide). Mostly because I'm being selfish-- I don't have time to hand hold them through the learning process I just went through-- but also because I have a PDF of a complete joomla manual that's 95% as good as any commercial manual I have seen so I can just hand it to them and say "read this, let me know if you have any questions".
I think drupal has the potential to blow all other CMSs away, especially if there's a document management piece (I’m looking at the knowledge tree bridge now), but that's just not going to happen with this kind of learning curve.
Any way, I apologize if this comes off as a criticism-- it's not meant to be. I just love drupal and I'm hoping to turn my notes and learning experience into a document so I can give back to the community and help lessen the learning curve. Anyway, that's $5 worth from a newbie.
I'm with you and no dummy either
Worldfallz, totally agree with your opinion. We got into this at the same point and are having near identical experiences, Drupal seems much better to me, but there are some core confusions. I won't go into my background, suffice to say I'm no idiot when it comes to these things, and I evaluated 7 other CMSs before going with Drupal, several were easier, but had other issues.
I did less reading, and am less in depth on programming, but I did use the Cook book, unfortunately that did not save me from the confusions and was sometimes too simplistic.
I wasn't confused about taxonomy, vocabularies and terms but a design element I chose as a result has got me into a problem:
Your schema: Taxonomy -- Vocabulary 1 --Term1
Term2
Term3
Term 3a (possibly)
Term 3b (possibly)
Term4
Vocabulary 2
etc... is almost what I did
except I wanted a menu to match taxonomy and I was able to auto generate this with modules and by making my top level 'Taxonomy' a vocabulary as well, let's call this 'TOP Vocab' and then, in menus making it the primary menu of all the other vocabs.
The problem comes when you start using CCK (which is also baffling at first), as the first 3 field functions I've tried to use only allow me to pick up one vocabulary and 'TOP vocab' doesn't actually have any terms in it - there's a detailed thread on this at http://drupal.org/node/156327.
(any help there most welcome!).
You can see the design element at the site www.morethanoil.com (the 'TOP vocab' is Energy Topics), but you can't see the CCK issue unless you are adding content (story) which requires a user reg.
Anyhow, I hope your project goes well, stay in touch.
Zaph
thanks
hey zaph thanks for the reply... it's comforting to know I'm not alone, I was beginning to doubt myself, LOL. And thanks for the link... i was just going down that path myself... designing my taxonomies and looking at CCK. CCK is most assuredly baffling- I'm still working my way through. And slowly but surely my "must have" list of modules is growing. I'm definitely keeping my notes and going to collate into something I can post.
I love the menus on your site... which modules did you need to get those up? I think I tried most of them, but couldn't manage to get them to do what I wanted so I wimped out and am in the middle of manually adding suckerfish to my template of choice... I much rather get this done with a module for maintenance purposes.
and if i figure out anything in the course of my learning to help you with your issue, i'll be sure to post there for ya...
thanks again for replying...
Mods used in menus
Worldfallz
The mods I am using to get my popular looking menus are
Taxonomy Menu - auto generates menu items to match taxonomy (but not necessarily anything to do with the pull down menu look)
SimpleMenu - puts the menu at top and ON TOP of your pages, I changed it a bit as per http://drupal.org/node/156006, but I've since noticed that there seems to be an update feature which puts the menu in place withing the page - I'll document that when I try it out)
slicedmenu - I don't know why I need this but if I deactivate it then the others stop working...
DHTML Menus 5.x-0.7 DHTML reduces page refreshes and allows my side menu to stay open or closed.
Hope this helps!
Zaph
For the greatest descriptive writing, read Mervyn Peake.