did Taxonomy Context documentation disappear?

@webmangy

I recently took over managing this module a couple months ago and I know the documentation is lacking. I don't recall seeing much for instructions before, so I am not sure if anything disappeared. Most of the configuration options are under Administer > Site Configuration > Taxonomy Context. There are also settings for each node type and vocabulary located at Administer > Site Building > Content Types > Edit (type) and Administer > Content Management > Categories > Edit (Vocabulary).

That should get you pointed in the right direction. If you still have problems post your issue and I'll see what I can do.

Also, I have been promising a new version of Taxonomy Context which totally revamps the configuration options and also centralized them to one location. I'm hoping to have this new version up soon.

Hi wbmangy & lee20,

> Very helpful module; [...] would love to see this available for Drupal 6.

I second that! Also, a non-dev release for D5 would be nice. What I am currently missing most is a description how to theme the taxonomy terms descriptions; I've seen the taxonomy_context.css in the module's directory, and activated "Use style for term and subterm display" in admin/settings/taxonomy_context, but haven't managed to make it work yet.

Last but not least, I'm trying to figure out the differences between Taxonomy context and similar modules, especially regarding possible incompatibilities. As far as I see at the moment, there are at least three contributed modules that at least partly do similar stuff.

* Taxonomy Breadcrumb (5.x-1.4; D6 port available), http://drupal.org/project/taxonomy_breadcrumb - "The taxonomy_breadcrumb module generates taxonomy based breadcrumbs on node pages and taxonomy/term pages".

Taxonomy context: "displaying [...] a "breadcrumb" trail of the current taxonomy term and any parent terms"

Differences: "Taxonomy Breadcrumb" seems to have more granular options for displaying breadcrumbs. As far as I know, both modules dont interfer with each other. however, I don't see a difference in the breadcrubs trails if both modules are active, or only one of them. "Taxonomy Context" has some options in admin/content/types; "Show taxonomy breadcrumb" is disabled by default, but I don't so anything changing if I enable it. Possibly, "Taxonomy Context" does everything "Taxonomy Breadcrumb" does; I had "Taxonomy Breadcrumb" running for over a year and recently switched to "Taxonomy Context". If there are differences, I'd love to hear about them.

* Taxonomy Menu (5.x-1.03; D6 port available), http://drupal.org/project/taxonomy_menu - "Transform any of your taxonomy vocabularies into menus easily!"

Taxonomy context: "context-sensitive menu block for each vocabulary".

Differences: "Taxonomy Menu" probably is the most closely related module to "Taxonomy Context"; it embeds a vocabulary into Drupal's menu system; it operates context sensitive, similar to "Taxonomy context", but does not provide blocks by itself (they can be created manually, and behave quite similar to those provided by "Taxonomy Context"). It claims to be" XHTML Strict, PHP E_ALL and Drupal code standards compliant"; I can't neither vouch for the coding quality of "Taxonomy context", not validate if these claims are trustworthy; at least it would definitely be nice to know, that a module at least tries to behave as it is supposed to be. Also, "Taxonomy Menu" integrates with Views ("create a view that the argument is the Term ID"); I haven't used this much, but "Taxonomy context" seems not to offer something similar. The "Views" integration offers a lot of flexibility, compared to more or less static blocks.

"Taxonomy Menu" nests a vocabulary anywhere inside the site's menu; it expands context sensitive. Similar to a "Taxonomy Context" block, the page layout tends to break, if there are a lot of terms in the same hierarchic level; none of the modules have an option to limit the amout of terms to be displayed, as far as I see. Also, both modules don't integrate with the book mechanism; if parts of the site are structured within books, the blocks from the book module, and "Taxonomy Context" resp. "Taxonomy Menu" might display similar entries; this tends to irritate users and can only be avoided by *not* displaying those blocks.

"Taxonomy Context" as well as "Taxonomy Menu" do time out, if accessing large taxonomies. Also, loading a vocabulary that is embedded into the menu, or into a block, can increase page loading times significantly - again depending on the size of the vocabulary. As far as I can see, none of these modules comes with some kind of smart caching (e.g. the "Sitemenu" module tries something like this).

* Directory (5.x-2.0; D6 port unknown), http://drupal.org/project/directory - "The directory module presents a very simple and lightweight hierarchical 'directory-like' view [...] of nodes that have been assigned to one or more designated taxonomy 'vocabularies'"

Taxonomy context: "displaying the title and description of the current term"

Differences: The "Directory" module has a bit different scope compared to "Taxonomy Context"; it's more some kind of browsing interface that displays nodes slightly different than in the usual teaser view. However, it integrates taxonomy breadcrumbs, and it displays sub-terms, also.

Vocabularies can be included in the menu or in a block, but they don't show context sensitive entries. It has nice options like "Show count of nodes in categories", or "Hide terms with no content", but those can only be enabled or disabled by an administrator; the user can not filter (or expand) what he is seeing. As the other related modules, "Directory" does not interface with the book system; neither directory pages nor taxonomy terms can be included in a book; however, the URL paths can be manually embedded into the menu system; there are no autmatisms here.

I think, "Directory" used to display taxonomy descriptions, but at least in the current release it doesn't do this anymore. As far as I know at the moment, "Taxonomy Context" is the only way of exposing taxonomy descriptions to the user without harvesting the taxonomy's treasures with handwritten code. If there are other options out there, I'd like to hear about them and to compare with the rich features offered by "Taxonomy Context".

Greetings, -asb

> I didn't see anything to configure

The path is /admin/settings/taxonomy_context; if it's not there, something might have gone wrong during installation; Taxonomy context does not require additional access permissions (/admin/user/access). Check the menu (/admin/build/menu), possibly the menu entry is just hidden. If not: does Taxonomy context provide menues? Are they working properly?

I had a similar problem with a "missing" settings page that was caused by an earlier installation of this module (4.x) that I did not uninstall properly. Installing the 5.x version, then disabling, deinstalling, then reinstalling resets everything to default values.

Greetings, -asb