Joomla! Discussion Forums

Hey,

Thanks for developing this functionality!  It's really necessary I feel, particularly given that you can't seem to allow users to submit to more than one Section without multiple submit buttons (which I think is really a messy way to go - this solution is much better)

I've got it working, but I'm seeing some weirdness on my site: it appears that the link from the frontpage blog versus the category blog versus the section news page all have different parameter values (I turned on the built in SEF URLs after I validated it, just to make it easier to see).  Not sure if this is common or not - I have a pretty vanilla install as well, I just installed MosCE.

Check out the install at my (mostly empty) site http://techprousa.com  The link to "Sid's Cell Phone Is Tech News" goes to different places from Home, News, and Tech News section (see left navigation menu).  In my Tree, News is the parent Category of Tech News Category, and news has Articles as parent Section.  In all cases the page shows up, but I'm concerned about it as "duplicate" content.

Sid

Wow!  I had given up on exploring the possibility of having some depth in my content categorization with Joomla until version 2 rolls out finally and then today stumbled upon this thread and man am I excited to play with it on our dev server!

Fantastic work stvn!

q./

Great to start working on this. I badly need to list content in multiple categories.

I have modified the files to work with the multiple categories and am going to work on making the rest of it to work.

An idea to manage the categories is to add a tab where you can set the parameters and have the categories in the section listed with radio boxes. This would lock it to the current section, but i think that would be enough for a first version.

Another idea is to have it listed in the default category if no extra categories are selected.

But first I am going to have the table view use #__content_categories.

//gasp

Really looking forward to this being released. In the mean time, I'm going to have to do it this way:

• United States (Static Page, hardcoded links)
   
   
  • Solutions (Section)
       
    • Networking Solutions (Category)
           
      • Blammo Networking Program (Content Page)
             
      • Bingo Networking Program (Content Page)
         
     
• United Kingdom (Static Page, hardcoded links)
   
  • Solutions
       
    • Networking Solutions
           
      • Blammo Networking Program (Content Page)
         
       
    • Government Solutions
           
      • Special Government Program
         
     

This brings up another issue for another topic. We require separate sites for US and UK since the language usage differs and the products we offer differ. So far my way of handling this is to use modules for everything surrounding the content, and have separate US and UK modules. Then I can attach the right module to the right page. This is a pretty lame solution as it is labor-intensive and annoying. Can anyone suggest a better way to do this?[/list]

Another way to deal with this would be to use section/category combos in multipes of 3, but you'll probably have to have at least one page that has static links. I'm not going to use the li tags this time.

section
  -category
    -content page with static links to the next section
      -section linked to from above
        -category
          -content items

a way to break out of the multiples of 3 limitation this creates might be to use blog-style section pages, which will make a section appear similar to a category by displaying the content items it contains with a link to that item. example:

section (blog style, links directly to content items)
  -content item (with static links to the next section)
    -section (table style, shows categories)
      -category
        -content items

you could flip-flop the top and bottom section arrangement if it suits you better. While not ideal, this does produce a 5-level hierarchy with just one page hard-coded. There's one more variation on this here:

static page (with static links to the next section)
  -section (table style, shows categories)
    -category
      -content items

generally, you won't need to add to your top level of hierarchy (products, services, etc) and if you do it's a rarity. So editing a few static links won't be too big of a deal when it's done sparsely. Hope this helps someone at least have some options while the Joomla team is working on adding multiple category support.

'Just stumbled on this thread. I know I probably sound like a broken record but YES, please give us subcategories VERY soon - please! I'm still having trouble understanding how this wasn't considered a basic and fundamentally necessary thing from the beginning. When the developers were thinking of what they wanted to accomplish initially, did they decide that their target audience was only small websites? 

Btw, stvn's workaround offers some interesting possibilities, but I for one don't want to take the risk of running into all kinds of problems it might create in the future when updating the script. So come on already, Joomla! 

http://mamboforge.net/projects/solarutils/

Interesting approaches to this topic.
The dev also manged to adress another MUST HAVE, allowinng the same content item to be published under/shared by multiple categories.
If not 1.1, J! 1.2 (or whatever next major release will be numbered) should incorporate contributions such as this.

Ljv.

Folks,
wondering if there's been further movement on this subject.
For our needs, this capability is absolutely necessary.

Thanks,

Geetz Romo
www.howtospeakhip.com

yes - any update

If I could have one feature added to Joomla it would be this!
Second would be a nice database backup feature!

any links for solarutils? forges down..

Hello everyone
The sub-categories are indeed a must. I´m building a non-profit organization website with Joomla and I´m having many problems because of it.  When can we expect a Joomla version with the ability for sub-categories it is very importante for me to now because if that version will come out let´s say until summer probably I could wait but if don´t,  I have to rebuild all the website concept or thinking about change to another cms.

Thanks very much
fapeixoto

I can tell you, that this feature wont be included in a version available to this summer.

Thanks Hackwar

Be well

We were able to get get joomla to allow for nested categoires in version 1.0.7 and the latet dev version.  You can check out how I did it as well as an exaple (Look at the news section) at http://joomla15.wpmdev.tzo.com/

This demo is the latest build.  It was a pretty simple hack.

Hello

Congratulations for your great job it could be the answer to our prayers. But in Portugal we have a saying that is somethink like this "when the charity is to big the poors don't imediatily believe it".

If, as you say it was not so hard to do, why the core team doesn't did it already. This thing of sub-categories is a very important thing many people using Joomla asked manytimes for this development and the core team always said that it will be hard to do because it will need a lot of changes in the database, etc, etc. and only with version after the Joomla 2.0 maybe will have subcategories...

Is it safe to do this in a working website?
It will not damage the structure or the datrabases?
Is it possible to this with the next versions of joomla?

Do you see what I mean

For me something like this it's absolutely gold and I will try it in test instalation.

Thanks very much. You made a great job. But I realy liked to understand why the core team does not think of this before? Maybe it is not absolutely safe.

Thanks again
Keep up the Good Work
FaPeixoto

Here is a reply as to why the devs don't want to use it
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php?topic ... icseen#new

Basically it is a backward compatibility issue.


I would completely test this first, before i used it in any production site.
It doesn't change the database 1 drop.  The parent_id field isn't being used for ANYTHING so its safe to use.
The demo site I have up at http://joomla15.wpmdev.tzo.com/ is running what will be the next version of joomla, so yes, it works with the next version.

My uneducated newbie guess as to why the developers haven't done this yet is that the current system of sections and categories just isn't how things *should* work.  Sections are categories in concept, when you think about it.  That is why in 2.0 they are going to do away with sections and allow for subcategories.  There is a way things *should* be done, but doing it the *best* way will require a change in the overall way the system works (no sections) .  Regardless of what the *best* way to do things is, it can still be done with the system as is.  They just want to wait and do it right.  But this is just my guess.

Not all of us can wait that long.  In my research, I found very little on how to make the system do this.  That's why I have posted how we did it.  If someone else wants or needs to do this, now they can find out how to do it.  If the devs look at it and say, what the heck, lets put it into the next release, that cool too.

Thanks very much for your answer Paul. I'm developing a Cultural Institution website in Portugal I will keep in touch in this forum if I use the solution developed by you to solve the subcategories thing and of course when I put the website online I will post the url for you to check it out.

Just one more question.

Problably will be impossible to answer now, but I will ask anyway. Do you think that in future solutions in Joomla for subcategories will be possible to adapt the contents already created with this solution you presented to the Joomla solution, if they don´t use your way.

Sorry if this question is exposed in a confused way. English is not my natural language.
I still didn't try your solution. But if I'm not wrong it will work with 1.0.7 and 1.0.8? It is just changing the files, correct?

Thanks once again for your work and for your answer.

If I understand your first question, yes, this should work with future versions.  I am not doing anything new to content.  Content goes into categoires just the same as before.  The only change is the way categoires are viewed. (basically I only show categoires that belong to that section or category.  Currently they show all categoires in the section)  If you used my solutions, and then later, went to a future joomla version without my changes, when you went into a section, all of the categories and subcategories would show up, rather then just the parent category.  Nothing would break.  If I correctly understand what they plan to do to make subcategoires possible in the future,  then they will be getting rid of sections completely.  This means that when they do allow for subcategories, the entire content categorisation will be different.  If they plan to allow users to upgrade form an old version, to this "new" version, then they will have to do work to make the old content fit into the new structure.  Since my solution doesn't change the structure at all, anything using my solution will port to the new system fine.  It may be that no one will be able to "upgrade" to that new system though, because it will be so different.  In that case, wheather or not you use my solution, you will have to rework your content.  And yes, it works with 1.0.7 and 1.0.8.

Thanks very much once again. I will try your solution ASAP.
I will post my impressions in the forum very soon.
Thanks

Be well
FaPeixoto

please let us know if you manage to get the admin side sorted as well.

and i thought that i am only one who was interested in it, unfortunately we are not going to have anything like this till summer 07 (my guess from replies of dev in other threads related to this topic)     

I would say fall 06 is a better guess

any one else tested work done by stvn??

Hi,

sorry for bringing old topic up again.  I just realised that I was thinking something else and this does something else lol.  Anyways, is there a simple fix like this which allows one news item to be added to more than one category??  other than having to copy it...

*EDIT*

1 other thing I can understand it being difficult to add an article to multiple categories if it will only be stored in the database once.  However, what if the article is stored twice (or more than twice)?  Once in each category??  That should be easier shouldn't it and it should not affect other things.. ?

just adding my 2 cents worth (or less due to inflation)

I've been using gallery2 lately.

you can have as many levels of 'albums' as you wish.

such a dream to integrate this freedom of levels, sections, containers with joomla!!!

gallery, joomla for pictures????

hmmm so summer 06 reaching its end soon ........ but not our wait ....... how long we'll have to wait? till then I can only say miss you joomla , waiting for my site going joomla soon ...... 

We just did a large school-related site, and here is how we solved the issue:

The menu structure we needed was this:

School 1
- - 1st grade
- - - - Class 1a
- - - - Class 1b
- - - - Class 1c
- - 2nd grade
- - - - Class 2a
- - - - Class 2b
- - - - Class 2c
etc

School 2
- - 1st grade
- - - - Class 1a
- - - - Class 1b
- - - - Class 1c
- - 2nd grade
- - - - Class 2a
- - - - Class 2b
- - - - Class 2c
etc.

We created sections for each school and categories for each class, like this:
School 1
- Class 1a
- Class 1b
ect

So we skipped the whole 2nd level menu items.

In the menu we solved it like this:

School 1: Displays content section school 1
- - 1st grade: Displays content categories 1a, 1b, 1c (done by multiselect on the menu creation page)
- - - - Class 1a: Displays content category 1a

etc.

You could easily encorporate a larger structure too, for instance for several counties:

(Schools would still be sections and classes would still be categories)

County 1 (blog view of multiple school sections)
- - School 1 (blog view of one school section)
- - - - 1st grade (blog view of multiple class categories)
- - - - - - Class 1a (blog view of class category)
- - - - - - Class 1b
- - - - - - Class 1c
- - - - 2nd grade
- - - - - - Class 2a
- - - - - - Class 2b
- - - - - - Class 2c

Just an FYI for everyone:  I fixed Joomla so that it supports unlimited Sub Categories & content within those sub categories.  If enough people want the solution, I can put together a package or instructions on how to modify to gain unlimited sub-category support.

bdparnes: I definately think that would be a popular addon to Joomla, both version 1.0.12 and 1.5