Taxonomy

I think it would be nice to have a taxonomy in MODx. I just read that some universities were using MODx as their cms, and adding a taxonomy would be great for eg them.
Having a taxonomy would make a better faceted search.

You can use a TV for simple taxonomy like tags.

Yeah but tags and folksonomies are not as structured as a taxonomy. I would like to see a hierarchy taxonomy where i can state that x rdfs:subClassOf y so all individuals in x is also in y . Or another example :Analyst rdfs:subClassOf :Researcher.

Taxonomy - me too!
Once I’ve seen it in Drupal, how efficient and scalable it was there (tree structure, various vocabularies, free tagging on/off) - I considered it to be one of the core features, and would like to see sth. similar in ModX too.
Please take a look at how it works on Drupal. Taxonomy can be used as menu navigation, tags. Organizes your content both hierarchically and semantically.

But we’re not Drupal, and we like our visual tree hierarchy. Taxonomy certainly has it’s place and it may mean MODx is not the right solution for every project, but how many websites start in the design phase with a sitemap (equivalent to our document tree)?

In all fairness however, if someone were to create a detailed functional spec of how taxonomies would work in conjunction with MODx it may provide an interesting area to explore.

Quote from: rthrash at Feb 18, 2009, 06:40 AM

But we’re not Drupal, and we like our visual tree hierarchy.

Modx’s simple and straight-forward document tree is one of the biggest advantages compared to majority of other content management systems. Taxonomies may be useful to academics or admins building complex web services but for "ordinary end-users" they are very hard to use or even comprehend.

Compared to Drupal, Joomla etc Modx’s document/menu structure is fantastically elegant and simple to use so let’s keep it that way!

But we’re not Drupal,

Trust me - I know that.

and we like our visual tree hierarchy.

I like it too, that’s why I learn ModX now ;-) and I didn’t mention Drupal feature to provoke cms vs. cms mud fight.

What I learned about taxo was how end-user (editor of content and users) liked it in Drupal-based site.
So - one can have only one static tree hierarchy represented by parent-child documents. And that concept is clear for everybody.
But when it comes to describing content - scalable tagging structure, independent from content hierarchy is very helpful sometimes.
Eg. if you have asus p4 laptop, 1gb ram and 40gb hd, maybe you want to compare it with other models out there. So you would like not only to follow "static tree" created by editor (other asus stuff from that year), but you would like to enter "processors tree" and find other stuff in p4 branch or jump to another brunch - core duo.

Alternatively - there could be ram memory tree, or HD tree.  Or maybe screen resolution. Whatever you want - taxonomy provides alternative ways to navigate, with their own structures, own breadcrumbs etc.
I think this is pretty natural way of dealing with any "content" - and it is quite easy to explain to your client, at least I was lucky with it.

Compared to Drupal, Joomla etc Modx’s document/menu structure is fantastically elegant and simple to use so let’s keep it that way!

Of course. I do not want to say Modx should be designed like this or that. But taxonomy is sth you can find almost eveywhere (eg bothany), only we do not usually know it’s named like that. If two guys - X and Y are hungry and in search for restaurant, X may be looking for specific kind of restaurant (pizza or sushi?) while Y would prefer one located as close possible (Brooklyn or rather Manhattan?) and it has nothing to do with document structure imho. Taxonomy is mere "meta describing of content".
Besides - I’m really impressed with Modx now ;-) although I do not understand it very much.

You can do exactly what you want with some relatively simple snippets and smart use of TVs. And you can make the user-management and input side of the equation even better with ManagerManager.

Hi blaize

Quill or Related can be used to create non-hierarchical relationships between modx documents and so create a taxonomy. Ditto can be used like Drupal’s Views module to output these relationships in any way you like. You can easily create the example catalogue structure you described. One tip I have is that Ditto calls can be nested inside Ditto templates; thus you can grab related document fields using Ditto?&documents=`[+myRelatedDocids+]` when iterating through a modx document folder.

http://modxcms.com/Quill-2172.html
http://modxcms.com/Related-2081.html