Why do we care about taxonomy?

• Several features we plan to implement depend heavily (or entirely) on taxonomy.module
• Our former site grew to over 1300 nodes, and people chronically complained that they couldn't figure out where to find existing content or where to post new information.
• We want the new site to be easier to use: easier to navigate, easier to search, easier to post to. The taxonomy we set up will have a large influence on this outcome.

Categories

Drupal's taxonomy module is an _extremenly_ flexible tool for categorizing and organizing the content of our site. To make effective use of it, we need to understand its features, abilities, and interaction with other Drupal features, choose carefully how we'll use these features, and then stick to our plan.
Specific details about how taxonomy features interact with and will be used by the modules & content of our site will be developed/maintained here:

Current plan for developing site taxonomy

• Define functional requirements for site, including desired content, drupal content types we'll use to manage each, target audiences and features we want to provide for each.
• For each drupal feature we plan to use and for each feature we want to provide, identify how our taxonomy will affect it
• Develop a draft taxonomy that supports content types, features, and goals above. Test, & revise as necessary
• Document the final taxonomy as necessary for each target audience and for each content type/feature. This includes webmaster documentation, end user helptips, etc.
• Monitor and adjust as necessary as content is added to site.

General notes about the taxonomy features follow below:

• Admin page for taxonomy module is here: http://test.ebase.org/admin/taxonomy

• Drupal handbooks on terminology
are here: http://drupal.org/node/81589
and here: http://drupal.org/node/21951
and here: http://drupal.org/node/21947
and here: http://drupal.org/node/937

Have a look and make sure you understand the concepts of nodes & modules.

Summary:
- Content is sumbitted/stored/managed as nodes.
- Many modules support creating/displaying different types of content, and each such module creates its own kind of nodes. A node created by the Polls module is a called a Poll, a node created by the Story module is called a Story, etc.

Summary of the interaction between nodes, modules, and taxonomy:
- The taxonomy system can be used to categorize/classify/organize nodes.
- Most modules are free to use the taxonomy system differently if desired, or to use a common taxonomy shared by several modules.
- Some modules _must_ use the taxonomy system in a specific way unique to that module and its nodes.

• Drupal handbooks discussing the taxonomy module are here:
http://drupal.org/node/120624
and here: http://drupal.org/node/299
and here: http://drupal.org/node/937
Helpful articles:
http://digitalsolutions.ph/couchkamotereviews/power_drupal_categories
http://digitalsolutions.ph/couchkamotereviews/newCMS

Please have a look at these and make sure you understand the features of Drupal's taxonomy system.

Summary:
- Taxonomy is the name of the whole system and the name of the module that implements it. This used to be the name of the menu item in the admin menu.
- "Category" is the more recent "user friendly" name for Taxonomy and new name for the menu item. It was changed a couple of versions back because newbies seemed to be scared of the word "Taxonomy" - but the ambiguousness of the word "Category" seems to have created more confusion than it solved.
- A taxonomy is composed of a set of oe or more vocabularies, each containing one or more terms.
- A "term" is a label or tag or keyword used to categorize nodes. Terms can be children and parents of each other to create hierarchies. Terms are the only hierarchical part of the system.
- A "vocabulary" is a collection of terms that share some sort of relationship with each other. The vocab isn't part of any hierarchy as such.
- The taxonomy we develop (related terms grouped into vocabularies bound to modules and used to organize content nodes) should be guided by the purpose(s) we want it to serve. Broadly, categorizing our site's content should make it easier for users to identify and navigate to desired content. More specifically, we may want to use a particular aspect of the taxonomy module's interaction with other drupal features to achieve a specific result. For example, if we want to display a menu choice that can present users with all documentation for a certain version of ebase, we need to establish two vocuabularies (one including the term "documentation" and one including terms for each version of ebase) and use these to categorize all relevant nodes.