Taxonomy management in eZ PublishThe new eZ Tags datatype

Ivo Lukač

www.netgen.hr/eng

@ eZ Winter Conference 2011, Nice

What is taxonomy?

“Taxonomy is the practice and science of

classification” (wikipedia)

Word comes from the greek word taxis – order,

arrangement (lexical roots)

Taxonomic schemes are usualy organized in tree

structures using parent-child relationship

“Hierarchical taxonomy is a tree structure of classifications

for a given set of objects” (mathematical definition)

Well known example of taxonomy is the Biological

Taxonomy which classifies all plants and animals

Examples from IT domain:

File systems with directories

Web sites with pages

Taxonomy in CMS

Hierarchy of pages – how the pages are structured

Types of pages – what kind of information pages hold

Page attributes (meta data)

TAXONOMIES ARE USED ALL THE TIME

3 general types:

CLOSED (predefined, prefilled)

OPEN (“folksonomy”, user tags)

DYNAMIC (facets generated depending on the context)

eZ Publish – taxonomy tools today (1)

Node tree structure

Classes

Sections

Datatypes:

ezselection

ezoption

ezobjectrelation(s)

ezkeyword

Extensions:

ezfind

Community efforts:

ezlabel (3.x)

ezobjectrelationbrowse

eZ Publish – taxonomy tools today (2)

NODE TREE

Good for web page categories

User policies appliable

Combining more taxonomies is pain

CLASSES & SECTIONS

Good for pages type, user policies appliable

no hierarchy, can’t be open

FOR CONTENT HIERARCHY & TYPES OF WEB PAGES

eZ Publish – taxonomy tools today (3)

SELECTION DATATYPE

Can’t be open, no hierarchy, hard to maintaine

Good only for small “never ever going to change” sets

OBJECT RELATION(S) DATATYPE

Can be open, easier to maintaine, bad performancewise

KEYWORD DATATYPE

Can be open, but can’t be closed, no hierarchy

LIMITED POSSIBILITIES FOR PAGE ATTRIBUTES

A quick poll

WHAT DATATYPES DO YOU USE FOR TAXONOMIES?

Selection dataype: ~10

Objectrelation dataype: ~25

Keyword datatype: ~15

Other/Community extensions: ~3

Do we need a better tool?

Yes, we need a good taxonomy tool

WHY?

To build better site navigation

To give better search results

To reduce redundancy

To have easier data management

TO HAVE BETTER USER EXPERIENCE

eZ Tags datatype

Not a silver bullet,

but close

eZ Tags – a new tool (1)

IN MASTER BRANCH READY FOR 4.5

Combined open and closed taxonomy system

Hierarchy similar to node tree

Special database tables

Management interface

“Sexy” editing

Suggestions (powered with eZ Find)

Tag view

Extended attribute filter for content list/tree fetch

eZ Tags – a new tool (2)

IN DEVELOPMENT BRANCH

Synonyms

Merging

Management interface search

Attribute level segmentation

eZ Tags – in action

Croatian Independent Software Exportes (a web under devel)

Members shared blog with:

Post type tags

segmented, predefined, small set, closed

Geo location tags

segmented, partially defined, open

Business tags

segmented, predefined, closed

Technology tags

segmented, empty, open now/closed later

Other tags

open

eZ Tags – in action

eZ Tags – in action

eZ Tags – in action

eZ Tags – a new tool (3)

IDEAS FOR FUTURE

Multilanguage

if synonyms are not enough

Better suggestions

based on other attributes content

Import

e.g. why not import Dewey Decimal

Integration with url alias subsystem

to avoid module/view in url

Advanced filter views (with AND/OR)

e.g. /tags/and/France/IT+industry

e.g. /tags/or/France/Germany/Norway

eZ Tags - try it out

https://github.com/ezsystems/eztags

Feedbacks:

http://projects.ez.no/eztags

eZ Tags - special credits

Bård Farstad (@bardfarstad) – initiating

development and pushing it to 4.5

Edi Modrić (@emodric) – server side

Petar Španja (@periklo) – client side

Questions?