Is tagging of any use?

(N Ashton) #1

I’ve been scouring the documentation and the forums (and poking various asset types with a stick) to find out how the tagging feature is meant to be used and am coming up blank. It just seems like one of those features that has been built to do one specific job for one client and is missing the last 5% of functionality that would make it genuinely useful. All I can see in the forums are kludges and loose workarounds.

Okay I could tag a page with a term and have it list other pages/pull in imagery that is similarly tagged. That’s fine, maybe that’s enough for some. Crucially I can’t see a way to do anything to manage those tags outside of the tagging screen of the admin view. You can’t change them in Easy Edit, or add/edit/delete thesaurus items.

The Tag Listing asset’s manual says:

The Tag Listing Page allows you to list the tagged Thesaurus Terms for the assets in a particular root node, for example your Site. This allows you to create a tag cloud of terms relevant to the content in your Site. These tags could then be linked to Related Asset Listings to display pages with selected tagged terms.

Well I can’t see at all how to achieve this, has anyone ever done it? Sure you can make a link that has the ID of the tag, but as a Related Asset Listing can’t do anything with that (it needs an actual asset to relate to) where do you send that link? Otherwise its just a pretty word map.

Maybe I could try ajaxing in a simple edit screen, but that would be hours of work for what can only be a substandard output.

I’ve tried using thesaurus metadata instead, which at least allows users to affect the tagging in Easy Edit (I can manage without weighting functionality), which at least then lets me do an asset listing. It might even let me do all I need except for managing the tag thesaurus itself, which is horrendous even in the admin view and completely impossible through any other means. You can’t trigger a tagging change from a thesaurus metadata item either since you can’t access the ID. I’ve seen it suggested that you have a folder structure corresponding to your tags but that doesn’t seem very scalable and fails as soon as you want to start changing tags on existing items.

I see that 5.4.5 deprecates the Related Asset Listing and wonder if that change is accompanied by anything that helps us manage tags in a broader context.

Is anyone actually using tags successfully for something? If you have a little time would you mind telling us what (and how)?

Matrix Version: 5.1.5.1

(Tbaatar) #2

You have to re-read the manual to get the tagging working.

However, the days of Tag Cloud seems like a old buzz phrase now. I believe a better process is to use a Related Asset Metadata to tag your pages and use Asset Listing or SSJS (better option) to print the related pages.
Take a look at this tutorial: https://matrix.squiz.net/tutorials/2017/how-to-use-server-side-js-in-paint-layouts

If you have small number of pre-defined tags of around 10-20 then I wouldn’t even bother with Related Asset Metadat, instead create a Metadata Table List of Tags/Checkboxes. This will make your editorial process a lot simpler during the creating of assets as these metadata will be visible in the Metadata Screen (Edit+ or not). You can quite easily achieve something like this: https://www.royalparks.org.uk/whats-on/upcoming-events (built with Squiz)

(N Ashton) #3

Thanks tbaatar and don’t worry I’ve re-read the manual plenty of times, it certainly seems like the Tag Listing Page’s entry is inaccurate.

I think you (and the lack of other responses) have confirmed, in a roundabout way, that I am wasting my time looking at having a dynamic tagging function in 5.1 and should come back to it when we are upgraded.

(Tbaatar) #4

Dynamic tagging has worked as long as i can remember going back to version 3, and i have a website with Matrix v4.18.9 using the Tag Listing.

(N Ashton) #5

Do you have users editing tags using Easy Edit?

Do you have a page that you can supply with a tag’s ID to and have it list everything with that tag?

If so it would be very helpful if you could reveal how, since a related asset listing page can’t accept a tag as a parameter.

(Tbaatar) #6

Hi,

You can allow users to edit tags from the Edit+ or Simple Edit Screen.

It depends on how much control you would like to give to your users. For example:

If you want to give limited set of tags then you can use Thesaurus terms as Metadata. The metadata screen can be exposed to users so they can select from the list of already created tags. Tag management will need to be done through admin.

If you want your users editing tags and coming up with their own then I think you are better to use Search Page Asset. All you need to do is provide an empty Metadata for your users to add their own tags in Edit+ or Simple Edit and on the public facing site, configure your Search Page to look for Metadata value. Almost same as a website search but only difference is that it will use ‘stored search’ as opposed to typed search (initial search page). For more info about read up the Search Page manual particularly the stored search.

Thanks.