knowledge-base built on drupal

(It doesn't really sound much like what you want to do though)

Our modifcations to taxonomy_context don't show up on the front page anywhere. For the front page we use the front_page module and a bunch of PHP functions we adapted from PHP snippets in the handbook.

We were originally using taxonomy_context for the way it rendered the terms descriptions at the top of the listings. If we were to do this again now we would probably use the Category module and maybe also the Views module for that functionality.

Our changes to the taxonomy_context module were basically:

• Adding extra fields to the admin/settings/taxonomy_context page so that for each vocabulary, you could choose an optional secondary vocabulary to filter against.
• Then when viewing a listing from a term in one of those vocabularies, you would get a list of terms from that second vocabulary. That list would just contain link using the form /taxonomy/term/x,y which gets you an intersection set of nodes that are tagged with both terms.

The code is a bit of a ugly hack tailored to this site, and my first attempt at altering a module. I had thoughts of redoing it as a standalone module that created a block, but never got around to it. I think these days with 4.7 I'd probably take a much different approach anyway.

I could post a patch on the web somewhere I suppose, but bear in mind that it would be against an earlier version of taxonomy_context than what is current for 4.6.

--
Anton
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Example Knowledge Base built using Drupal

This patch was taken against 1.36.2.1 (note the funnily named copy I just wgetted from cvs.drupal.org that I ran the diff against). I wasn't sure how to diff the two files any cleaner than that (I don't use cvs).

I see 1.36.2.2 has come out recently with some of the 4.7 goodies backported - I'm not sure the patch will work against that.

If you guys can wait until tomorrow, I'll find a spot on our webserver to post the patch and our version of the file.

(oh yeah, having hierarchical vocabularies will probably cause it some trouble)

--- taxonomy_context.module?rev=1.36.2.1        2006-03-22 17:26:50.781254904 +1200
+++ taxonomy_context.module     2005-09-18 21:01:59.000000000 +1200
@@ -151,6 +151,12 @@
     }
     $term->image = $image;
     $term->links = $links;
+
+    $term->vid = taxonomy_context_get_term_vocab($tid);
+    $term->foreign_vid = variable_get("taxonomy_context_vocab_" . $term->vid . "_filter_term", 0);
+    if (variable_get("taxonomy_context_filter_terms", 0) && $term->foreign_vid) {
+      $term->filters = taxonomy_context_get_filter_list($term);
+    }
     return theme("taxonomy_context_term", $term);
   }
 }
@@ -367,7 +373,7 @@
  */
 function taxonomy_context_vocab_first_child_terms($vid) {
   $terms = array();
-  $result = db_query(db_rewrite_sql("SELECT n.tid FROM {term_hierarchy} t, {term_data} n WHERE t.tid = n.tid AND n.vid = %d AND t.parent = 0 ORDER BY n.weight, n.name"), $vid);
+  $result = db_query(db_rewrite_sql("SELECT td.tid FROM {term_hierarchy} th, {term_data} td WHERE th.tid = td.tid AND td.vid = %d AND th.parent = 0 ORDER BY td.weight, td.name", "term_data", "tid"), $vid);
   while ($term = db_fetch_object($result)) {
     $terms[] = $term->tid;
   }
@@ -464,6 +470,50 @@
   return $output;
 }

+/**
+ * Based on the terms vocabulary, finds the first child terms from the foreign
+ * vocabulary to be used as secondary filters on the taxonomy display page.
+ *
+ * @param $term
+ *   The term object
+ *
+ * @return
+ *   an array of links for secondary filter terms.
+ */
+function taxonomy_context_get_filter_list($term) {
+
+  $filters = array();
+
+  $url_ids = explode('/', str_replace("taxonomy/term/", '', $_GET['q']));
+  $url_terms = explode(',', $url_ids[0], 3);
+
+  if ($term->tid == $url_terms[0]) {
+    if (count($url_terms) == 1) {
+      $filter_term = 0;
+      $filters[0] = "<strong>" . t('All') . "</strong>";
+    }
+    else {
+      $filter_term = $url_terms[1];
+      $filters[0] = l(t('All'), 'taxonomy/term/' . $term->tid);
+    }
+
+    $foreign_term_ids = taxonomy_context_vocab_first_child_terms($term->foreign_vid);
+
+    foreach ($foreign_term_ids as $foreign_tid) {
+      $foreign_term = taxonomy_get_term($foreign_tid);
+      $foreign_term_name = $foreign_term->name;
+      if ($foreign_tid == $filter_term) {
+        $filter_output = "<strong>" . $foreign_term_name . "</strong>";
+      }
+      else {
+        $filter_output = l($foreign_term_name, 'taxonomy/term/' . $term->tid . ',' .$foreign_tid);
+      }
+      array_push($filters, $filter_output);
+    }
+  }
+  return $filters;
+}
+

 /**
  * Hook implementations
@@ -574,6 +624,26 @@
       $nodetypes[$type] = node_invoke($type, 'node_name');
     }
     $output .= form_select(t('Breadcrumb content types'), 'taxonomy_context_breadcrumb_node_types', variable_get('taxonomy_context_breadcrumb_node_types', array('story','page','book')), $nodetypes, t('Which content types should include terms in breadcrumbs?'), 0, 1);
+
+
+  $output .= form_select(
+  t("Enable filtering by foriegn terms"),
+  "taxonomy_context_filter_terms", variable_get("taxonomy_context_filter_terms", 1),
+  array(t("Disabled"), t("Enabled")),
+  t("This enables a filter menu on the taxonomy term view that allows the user to...(finish this description later)"));
+
+  foreach ($vocabs as $vid => $name) {
+    if ($name != 'none') {
+      $varname = "taxonomy_context_vocab_" . $vid . "_filter_term";
+      $output .= form_select(
+        t("Choose the filter vocab for the $name vocab"),
+        $varname, variable_get($varname, 0),
+        $vocabs,
+        t("When viewing a term from the $name vocabulary, this vocabulary will be used for the drill-down filter links."));
+
+    }
+  }
+
   return $output;
 }

@@ -606,11 +676,21 @@
   if ($type != "term") {
     $output .= "   <h2 class=\"title\">" . l($term->name, "taxonomy/term/" . $term->tid) . "</h2>\n";
   }
+
+  if ($term->filters) {
+    $output .= "  <div class=\"filters\">" . theme("item_list", $term->filters, t("Filter by:")) . "</div>\n";
+  }
+
   $output .= "   <div class=\"description\">" . $term->description . "</div>\n";
   $output .= "   <div class=\"links\">" . theme("links", $term->links) . "</div>\n";
   $output .= "  </div>\n";
+
+
   $output .= "</div>\n";
   $output .= "<div class=\"clearit\"></div>\n";
   return $output;
 }
-?>
\ No newline at end of file
+
+
+
+?>

--
Anton
New to Drupal? | Forum posting tips | Troubleshooting FAQ
Example Knowledge Base built using Drupal

Nice work...

I linked to above does respect url aliases and will use them in the menus if available.

We probably aren't going to do much improvements to the old 4.6 hacks we did - onwards and upwards with 4.7! After it gets released of course :)

--
Anton
New to Drupal? | Forum posting tips | Troubleshooting FAQ
Example Knowledge Base built using Drupal

I think filtering the handbook pages by Drupal version would be an excellent idea.

But as you're probably already aware, this probably wouldn't be a drop in solution. I'm not 100% on this but I don't think the book module supports this kind of dynamic filtering based on terms yet. I think this is the kind of thing Jeremy's Category module was intended for - ie combining the book and taxonomy type functionality. We're considering using the Category module for a future retrofit of our site for this reason.

--
Anton
New to Drupal? | Forum posting tips | Troubleshooting FAQ
Example Knowledge Base built using Drupal

We've updated the site massively in the last week or two. It's now a combined corporate product brochure type site and knowledge base with a very different look than when this thread started. The old knowledge base site (http://knowledge.ilign.com) is now the support section of the new 'corporate' site (http://ilign.com/support).

Once I get time I'll write up a new showcase post explaining a bit more about it :)

--
Anton
New to Drupal? | Forum posting tips | Troubleshooting FAQ

The current site is a bit of a neglected mess at the moment. Lots of old obsolete content has been deleted and quite a few features switched off.

We're in the middle of a large complicated redesign/redevelopment involving a Drupal 6 upgrade, a redesign of the Information Architecture, adding CCK/Views, splitting existing content into multiple node types, switching the community stuff to Organic Groups, migrating just about every contrib module to a different contrib module etc. Organic groups will be used for public user groups, partner blogs, and private customer portals for CRM type stuff. There's also 5 subthemes, and a lot of custom modules tweaking just about everything.

The knowledge base part of the site will be of less importance this time around, and will be simplified. There will be a smaller number of articles. We will be simplifying the taxonomy design - getting rid of some vocabs and shrinking others. We won't be using taxonomy_filter in Drupal 6 despite the substantial work I did rewriting it to make it fully extensible in Drupal 6. Note: taxonomy_filter is in good hands with a new maintainer though - you should still check it out if you want "intersections" between multiple vocabs.

Some lessons:

• Keep it as simple as possible (this can be quite hard depending on who is calling the shots or the scope of the project)
• Don't fall into the trap of having more content than your or your team can easily keep up to date
• People don't use knowledge bases as much as you think they will
• You have to keep reminding your content creators to find and edit existing content whenever possible instead of creating new content
• Try to avoid having to implement themes based on intricate PSDs that don't take Drupals architecture into account
• Only put timeless information into a knowledge base - eg information that always applies and gets overwritten/edited/replaced to keep it up to date. This content should always be written as if it is current NOW. Separate time based content that expires, or will happen in the future, or content that fades out of relevance (eg notices or announcements) out into a different channel like a blog.

The site was first set up with Drupal 4.4 (yikes), and has already been through upgrades to 4.5, 4.6, 4.7 and 5. There is quite a bit of accumulated cruft, and outdated modules. Once we've finished the Drupal 6 upgrade and it has settled down we'll probably do another showcase. The overall goal is to do things in a very Drupal 7 compatible manner, so a future upgrade will hopefully be much smoother.

To be honest though, I think I would've been better off just rebuilding it from scratch in a Python MVC web framework. And I probably will end up doing that some day instead of upgrading to Drupal 8 (or even 7 maybe). The business requirements have got a lot more complex, and it there comes a point where it is easier to just create something custom rather than constantly overriding and altering already existing generic code.