By mactoph on

I am extremely excited about migrating an existing site (National Resource Center for Paraprofessionals) over to drupal, but after a couple of days of page after page of advice on setting up a site structure, I am still have a few questions. I realize this is a big request, but if anyone has a couple of minutes to look at the direction I am headed it would be tremendously appreciated. This is the first of 4 sites that I am planning on moving to Drupal and I want to make sure that I get it done right! Perhaps this could also serve as a case study to some other poor soul who comes by trying to setup a hierarchical site-

As you can see in the link above, the existing site structure is setup similar to this:

Home
-Resources (All of the information in this Resources section is static- updated very rarely)
--State of the Art
---page1
---page2...
--Paraeducator Bibliography
---section1
---section2...
--List of articles
---article1
---article2...

-Conference (This section is constantly updated and revised with new pages coming and gong)
--page1
--page2...

-Forum (I am going to use phpBB2Drupal)

-Blog (Planning on using wp2drupal to import the posts from an old Wordpress directory and then using Stories sorted into Category Module categories)
--Category 1
---post1
---post2...
--Category2...

I think that is enough of my site structure to give you an idea of what I want to do. First of all, after much reading I am hoping to go with the category module to setup the structure and navigation of the site. Now here is my question, with the Category module installed and working fine, please help me to understand how I can setup each major section of the site (Resources, Conference, Forum, Blog) to appear in the main navigation with subcategories showing up as such in the main navigation AND if possible a listing of each of the subcategories on the front page of every major section that has subcategories. Here is what I am currently thinking, please let me know if I am off base...

Home
-Resources (Category Module Container)
--State of the Art (Category Module Container)
---page1 (Static page assigned a Category Module Category)
---page2... (Static page assigned a Category Module Category)
--Paraeducator Bibliography (Category Module Container)
---section1 (Static page assigned a Category Module Category)
---section2... (Static page assigned a Category Module Category)

-Conference (Category Module Container)
--page1 (Static page assigned a Category Module Category)
--page2... (Static page assigned a Category Module Category)

-Forum (Intergrated with the rest of the site using the Category Module Taxonomy Wrapper)

-Blog (Category Module Container)
--Category 1 (Category Module Container)
---post1 (Static page assigned a Category Module Category)
---post2... (Static page assigned a Category Module Category)
--Category2... (Category Module Container)

My primary question is whether or not the containers and categories from the Category Module that have referenced above are correct?

Any other advice or help is greatly appreciated. Terribly sorry for the lengthy piece- I am extremely grateful for any assistance.

Thanks so much!

Comments

jake28’s picture

jake28 commented

think in terms of content-types. For instance, your blogs. You'll be using the "blog" content type. When the user selects "add a blog" or whatever, they'll have "category options" to choose from. For your site, ,you'll have Category1 and Category2, which you're absolutely right, they ARE considered categories. But you'll want a "container" to hold the content created by these two categories. THis way users can simply click on a menu item created by the container and read all blogs created in all categories. They can also click on the individual menu items, "Category1", and "Category2" for blogs assigned to them.

Put simply, create the following:

Container: Blogs / Content type:Blog
Cateogry:Category1
Category:Category2

mactoph’s picture

mactoph commented

Thanks samfernandez-
For right now I am planning on using the blog function only to share site news/announcements - not for users. Would I still use the Blog content type, or its it primarily designed for use by a number of people?

venkat-rk’s picture

venkat-rk commented

--State of the Art (Category Module Container)
---page1 (Static page assigned a Category Module Category)
---page2... (Static page assigned a Category Module Category)

Do you mean that you wish to tag the static page with a category under that container? If so, you need to either:

  • Create the categories under the 'State of the Art' container as you can't tag a static page (or any other node type) with containers but only with categories under a container. But, your hierarchy and breadcrumb trail will then read Resources >> State of the Art >> Category Name >> Static page title.
  • Make 'State of the Art' a category instead of a container so that when you create the static page, you can tag it with 'State of the Art'. If you have menu items for assigned nodes enabled, this will automatically display the link to the static page under 'State of the Art'. Your hierarchy and breadcrumb trail will then read Resources >> State of the Art >> Static page title . I think this is what you want.
mactoph’s picture

mactoph commented

Perfect Ramdak- that is just what I was looking for. I think I will definitely be going with bullet #2 above. Part of my confusion was not really understanding when someone would want to use a container vs. a category... is that decision made based on whether or not you need to tag content with a node type (if yes, then a category?), what other factors are involved?
Thanks for your help.

venkat-rk’s picture

venkat-rk commented

is that decision made based on whether or not you need to tag content with a node type (if yes, then a category?)

Exactly.

what other factors are involved?

I can think of at least two situations:

  • If you want a container to hold node listings from many different node types, each taggable with a distinct set of categories, then it makes sense to have child containers within that container.
  • (Related to the point above)- You could then have distinct categories under each child container and also specify distinct node types for each child container. This also helps during content creation as you would only see categories for that particular node type and not all the categories.
mactoph’s picture

mactoph commented

Ramdak, thank you so much- that brief explanation made more sense to me than any of the documentation that I have gone through- much appreciated!

venkat-rk’s picture

venkat-rk commented

glad that helped:-)

In bullet point 2 of http://drupal.org/node/77002#comment-142380 above, I found that you can retain 'State of the Art' as the container without showing it in the breadcrumb trail or menu hierarchy. The settings are:

1.) Make it a hidden container
2.) Enable the content type in the hidden container (so that the category is available for tagging). Depth should be 0
3.) In category_menu settings for the hidden container, enable the menu items (or the category inside this container will not show in the menu tree)
4.) Enable the menu items for assigned nodes (breadcrumbs only)
5.) Create the child category under the hidden container

At the moment, it is better to do this if you are starting afresh as category.module does some weird things while updating changes to settings of containers already created.

maherg’s picture

maherg commented

I reached to this setup for a traditional Cat->SubCat->SubSubCat------->Node
PS : [C] denotes a container.

News [C]
-- Topics - News [C] ( Hidden + Disable TOC ) Is there an another way to disable TOCs in a category ?
---- Football
------- English League
---------- CONTENT
------- Spanish League
---------- CONTENT
---- Basketball
------- NBA
---------- CONTENT

I had something extra , I create a view (a simple list one) and associated it with 'Topics - News' , to have a unified look.

Thanks,
Maher

volunteermama’s picture

volunteermama commented

OK. I am looking everwhere for help.
I am setting up a new site. Something like slashdot I guess.
But I want to be able to mark most content with two main tags: location and topic.
And content might be different content types I guess.
Most content types need the same type of tags: location and topic.

I'm sure this type of thing has been done before...
locations will likely be:
world
country
state
city

and content might be marked with a topic:
science article
public event
editorial
protest
festival

and I guess even how those made people feel:
made me mad
made me happy

content types could be:
pages
story
event
blog
book review

So I might review a book that is for sale all over the world, that I did not like:
book review, world, made me mad

I might post a story about an editorial in a chicago paper, that I liked:
story, chicago, made me happy

I might post a something about an event in florida
event, florida

So..... then I might want to list content like (have a view? so a subdomain would list it like florida.newsIcareabout.com):
all things dealing with florida (events, stories, blogs)

or

all stories that made me mad (would include all topics in alll locations)

So how do I decide what is a container and what is a category?
Does it have to do with the bread crumb?
Is the bread crumb decided by how someone gets to an item (so the crumb trail can be differnent for the same item depending on how one nagivates there)? Or does each item have its own always the same bread crumb?

So if I have a story about an editorial in South America that made me mad and someone viewed if off the list of all articles that made me mad, will the trail be "Home > made me mad". And if someone viewed the same item looking for all things related to South America would the trail be "Home > South America"? If someone else was viewing all things South American, and wanted just made me mad things, would the trail be "Home > South America > Made Me Mad"?

Do I come to the decision of what is a category and what is a container by looking at how things will get created?

So If I want to create new content, for each piece, would select one of:

content type
location
topic
feeling

I get the feeling I dont need any containers, just categories? Oh! I swear I'm not an idiot! Just really confused!

Thanks for any help! As you can tell, I need it!

venkat-rk’s picture

venkat-rk commented

So how do I decide what is a container and what is a category?

There are a couple of simple, fundamental concept to grasp about taxonomy/category module:

  • Anything that you would tag a node with needs to be a category (taxonomy term, if you are using the taxonomy module). In other words, you can't tag a node with a vocabulary or a container.
  • You don't/can't tag a node with a content type; you just enable the content types in the relevant vocabularies/containers so that when you create a node, the relevant categories/taxonomy terms become available for tagging.

Tagging

So If I want to create new content, for each piece, would select one of:

content type
location
topic
feeling

Don't select content type (under category module, you can make a content type into a category by transforming it and it then becomes available for tagging) unless you want to complicate things further at this stage! May be later.

Containers
Locations, Topics and Feeling need to be containers and the stuff under each (Florida, Science article, Made me mad) would be typical categories- you would select one of them to tag your node with. To make all these categories available for tagging for each of your content types, you will have to enable all the relevant content types for each of these containers.

Breadcrumbs
Each content piece in drupal (node) has only one place in the menu system, not several. The breadcrumbs may vary depending on where the user is or if you are using the views module with the breadcrumbs option to generate listings, but when the user gets to the actual content piece at the node view level, the breadcrumb trail will always reflect the node's path in the menu system.

The difference with the category module is that the breadcrumbs would be based on the container/category structure and are built automatically. It is also possible to do this in taxonomy using pathauto, but the menus (and thus the breadcrumbs) reflecting the vocabulary hierarchy have to be built either manually or by using helper modules.

Hope this helps.

volunteermama’s picture

volunteermama commented

Thanks! It does help. I'll try it now! :)