Content Categories
In this part of the content analysis, you are making three decisions regarding how you categorizeIn Drupal, categories are called vocabularies your content.
- Will your content need to be categorized?
- Will you want your categories to be links?
- Do you want the categories to be pre-defined or user defined?
Decisions made during this analysis will affect
- supplemental navigation
- facetted search capabilities (if you need them)
- the way database queries are created and maintained
- theming decisions.
Categorize or Not
Before you can make a decision whether you want category terms to be predefined by the site administrator or generated by your users, you need to decide whether you want your content to be categorized to begin with.
Some people consider the type of content to be enough categorization. Quite often however, content can be organized into at least one more category. For example, articles are commonly categorized by topic (trees, shrubs, flowers) and products can be categorized by use (recreation, business, casual).
In the previous analysis activity when you identified if types of content would be related, you may have chosen to use a vocabulary term to connect different types of content based on a topic. If that is the case, you are using categories.
If Categories, Vocabulary or Field
When you categorize content and store that category information in the site database, you can use that information later to help describe your content. Content can be categorized using a vocabulary term(s) and/or terms in a field.
In Drupal, taxonomy vocabulary terms are links that typically appear above or below your content. It's your way to let your visitors know that there might be other pages that share the same term. If your users click on the term links, they will get a default teaser list of pages that all share that term.
The question is, do you want the category terms to be links or not? Consider the table below to see what fits your needs.
| Vocabulary Term | Data Field | |
|---|---|---|
Advantages | Provides linked terms to allow users to find similar content. Quick way to filter database queries with Views. If you change your mind, you can change a term and the content page is updated automatically. | Provides easy way to label or categorize content with text. Quick way to apply pre-defined values to your content. Easy to use when displaying bits of data. |
| Disadvantages | Requires a module to hide the linked terms if you don't want your users clicking on them. | If you change the predefined value in the field, the content pages using the value do not get updated. |
If Linked, Pre-defined or User Defined
The terms in the vocabularies that create your term links can be pre-defined by you (often referred to as a taxononmy) or they can be added by your content developers (sometimes referred to as a folksonomy or free tagging). There are pros and cons to each and you might find that a combination is warrented.
Pre-Defined Terms
Pre-defined terms refers to terms that you, as the site administrator, have created and made available. The advantage to using pre-defined terms is predictability. If you know which terms your users will use, you can query the database (using Views) and use those terms as filters. The disadvantage to using predefined terms is associated with sites whose content topics can vary and grow. You can't always predict all the categories you will need to provide and adding new terms might not be convenient.
User Defined Terms
Obviously, the advantage of user defined terms is its flexibility. Your users can categorize content the way they see fit. The disadvantage is inconsistency and lack of predictability. Free tagging can cause duplicate terms to be added to the term list and combining terms to "clean them up" is not an automated process. You also can't use the terms to filter your queries consistently. Free tagging is mostly about maximizing how your users can find content on the topic of interest.
Making Decisions
Assuming you have decided you need to categorize your content, you need to make a couple decisions. Consider the table below to help with your decision making process.
| Vocabulary Term | Data Field | |
|---|---|---|
| Predefined | If you want predefinded terms for your users and you want the terms to be links so that your audience can click on that link and find all pages with that term, consider using taxonomy vocabulary with fixed terms. | If you want predefinded terms for your users and you DO NOT want the terms to be links, consider using either want a taxonomy with the links hidden or a data field. |
| User defined | If you want your the users who create content on your site to be able to create categories as they create content AND you want the terms to be links to page that list all nodes associated with the term, consider using a vocabulary that is set for free tagging. This turns a Drupal taxonomy into a folksonomy. | If you want user defined terms but you DO NOT want the terms to be links, consider using the free tagging approach but hide the terms from your audience. |
Conclusion
As you move into defining the fields you need or want for your types of content, you might need to revisit your decisions. If you made a decision to try a data field to organize your content, be sure to list that as a field when you define the fields you need for each type of content.