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Need opinion on additional text fields for categories and/or sections
A confession: I was eating our own dog food recently and relaunched a family member’s site which has been operated by an aging combination of blood, sweat and DreamWeaver for ages. Finally, this site runs Txp. Phew…
But- I felt an itch when it came to build the navigation.
The site’s structure is simple:
- level #1: sections, e.g. brand overview
- level #2: categories, where appropriate, e.g. a single brand
- level #3: articles, e.g. a single merchandise
And now for the itch: At level #1, the sections’ and categories’ titles are used on several places throughout the site with different needs for verbiage (At the browser title bar I could use a 40+ character text, the secondary navigation items had to fit into less than 15 or 20 characters at best, the description META element could expand to 100+ characters). Yet all I got was the title field…
To remedy this, I was contemplating about adding two optional additional text fields to both the section and category definitions in Textpattern to complement the current title field which could be accessed just like the current title element, i.e. something like <txp:category shorttitle="1" /> and <txp:category longdesc="1" />
- How do you currently deal with such constraints?
- How would you judge such an extension? Too much clutter? Of little use? The best thing since Armstrong hit the moon?
Discuss!
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Re: Need opinion on additional text fields for categories and/or sections
Robert
Traditionally txp separated the sections from the categories by utilising sections for presentation purposes and categories for the structure. The placement of the sections in the ‘presentation’ tab and the current default user privileges reinforce this approach.
Having said that, I believe that meta-descriptions are a big omission and have long been ignored in txp. I remember reading an article recently which discussed the futility of keywords in favour of the meta-descriptions for engines such as google.
I am not a site designer but I would think that most of those who use txp for their clients eventually hand over their projects giving access to the ‘contents’ tabs and not in any of the other ones, including the ‘presentation’ tabs.
The default navigational structure (url schema) of txp can be seen to be contradicting this division as it does not accommodate for the end user (which for this argument I would consider them to be the designers’ clients). If a meta description is to be added, I would see this happening globally including individual articles, categories and sections but I would also think hard regarding access privileges by clients to the sections tab.
Yiannis
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NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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Re: Need opinion on additional text fields for categories and/or sections
colak wrote:
Traditionally txp separated the sections from the categories by utilising sections for presentation purposes and categories for the structure.
Actually, although others may disagree, I always found cats as a content taxonomy and sections as a presentational taxonomy to be a really logical differentiation. In my mind I always picture sections as tall and categories as wide.
Having offered that bit of tangential twaddle, I think meta-data descriptions for cats is valuable.
Last edited by mrdale (2008-08-09 18:55:31)
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Re: Need opinion on additional text fields for categories and/or sections
May I reinforce my quest for opinions or current best practises not only on meta-descriptions, but also on a “short title” field dedicated to menu items and such vs. the current longer title as e.g. used in <txp:page_title /> for section and/or category lists.
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Re: Need opinion on additional text fields for categories and/or sections
There definitely needs to be the ability to input a meta-desc. Maybe the option to use a custom, article excerpt, or automatically chop the article body text limited to a defined number of words or characters.
For me automation is the key. Meta-desc is pretty important for SEO purposes.
Here is an article and a video by Google’s Matt Cutts on Snippets and Meta Description Tags.
Last edited by mattmikulla (2008-08-09 16:07:07)
Art Rogue – Fine Art Photography
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Re: Need opinion on additional text fields for categories and/or sections
Matt – <txp:variable/> is what you need (4.0.7).
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Re: Need opinion on additional text fields for categories and/or sections
Hey jm.
Is there any documentation for txp:variable?
Art Rogue – Fine Art Photography
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Re: Need opinion on additional text fields for categories and/or sections
If the idea is to implement something new, I would go with another approach, maybe in a more “textpatternish” way than just adding some input-text/textarea tied to a particular element.
But then, what wet is suggesting is doable (perhaps not that easily) using (a lot) of conditionals. Maybe with 4.0.7 there will be an easier way of doing this.
How do you currently deal with such constraints?
- Usually, using conditionals like “txp:if_section” and “txp:if_category”. Of course, when you have thousands of categories, this may not be an option, and also, you will have to edit some page template or form to add the new conditional. Not appropiate when your client needs absolute control over each chunk of content on his site.
- For long section links (more descriptive links) you can use
<txp:section />as a wraptag. I’m not sure if you can do the same with<txp:category />. But then again, this is a more “manual” method, and if you non-saavy client needs to easily modify this, this is probably not an option. - regarding meta description and SEO automagically tasks done, the way to go is rah_metas. Of course, if wet’s features are implemented, rah_metas could take advantage of all the new fields added to section/category. Currently, rah_metas outputs a default text (defined inside the tag) when on article list context, if I’m not wrong.
How would you judge such an extension? Too much clutter? Of little use? The best thing since Armstrong hit the moon?
No doubt it could be useful. This almost looks like “custom fields” for section/categories (which can be seen as some kind of little chunks of “organizational” content).
At the same time, this could lead to a input-field-itis or textarea-itis just to manage little chunk of contents everywhere (not sure if this is something I won’t like, yet).
But then, I have a more ambitious idea which has been germinating on my brain while looking at some new neat little plug-ins (this, this, this and a few others).
This plugins are more or less related to hide/show things on “Content” tabs, with the objective of making it easier to end-users (clients) to manage their site content.
Another well-known fact/issue is that, in TXP, all main content is managed using articles. But then you have some chunks of static content that you don’t feel they deserve to be managed/published as (sticky) articles. If feels hackish, it feels like an article is too much for that.
Examples of this kind of content are footers, headers, meta-descriptions, section descriptions, category descriptions, etc.
You usually end up putting this chunks of content directly on the page template, or in a form, wrapped by conditionals.
Then it comes your client who wants to be able to edit all this chunks of contents, and you fear to give them access to the “Presentation” tabs because there is a chance they will be destroying your beautifully hand-crafted site.
Let’s start with the feature idea:
On “Presentation” -> “Forms”, we have the drop-down to pick up the form type. If you ever wonder how this option affects the functionality of a form, the answer is: it doesn’t. It’s just there for “classification” purposes, and then the Tag Builder also uses this classification.
What if we (well, devs) add a new type named “snippet”? Then, a form classified as “snippet” will be editable directly from “Content” -> “Snippets” (a new tab similar to “Presentation” -> “Forms”).
With the help of upm_textile forms can be written using Textile, as if they were an article.
Even in the “worst” case when your client needs to edit a more complex “snippet” form (a complex footer, a complex navigation, using HTML and/or TXP tags), you know they can’t access to the “Presentation” tab, nor they can edit any form that isn’t marked as “snippet”.
I could go further… and see this “Snippet” tab not related (internally) at all to “forms”. Just a new tab/db-table, similar to articles, but simpler, not tied at all to sections/categories, nor time, nor status. A “snippet” could be a input-field or a textarea. Nothing more.
This is almost similar to the “Snippet” concept on the MLP.
Last edited by maniqui (2008-08-09 17:12:44)
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Re: Need opinion on additional text fields for categories and/or sections
maniqui wrote:
regarding meta description and SEO automagically tasks done, the way to go is rah_metas. Of course, if wet’s features are implemented, rah_metas could take advantage of all the new fields added to section/category. Currently, rah_metas outputs a default text (defined inside the tag) when on article list context, if I’m not wrong.
You can always (4.0.7 or asy_wondertag) use tags inside tags ;)
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Re: Need opinion on additional text fields for categories and/or sections
Too much clutter?
Exactly.
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Re: Need opinion on additional text fields for categories and/or sections
wet wrote:
Too much clutter?
ruud wrote:
Exactly.
useful? Definitely!!!
Yiannis
——————————
NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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