Panels 2 with related terms
Hi guys I need your expert advice I'm new to panels and have used Drupal for a couple months. I did a lot of reading and testing. I've over-written the taxonomy views with panels 2.
My panel pulls in a view and instead of the default view it shows a table of Nodes that belong to that term.. this works fine.
I am missing features that nodes have but panels don't seem to have, mainly related terms.
My 2 problems:
I have taxonomy vocab A with terms a1, a2, etc, and taxonomy vocab B with terms b1, b2, etc.
If I use a node, I can have the node belong to both a1 and b1.
I don't show nodes. I show panle pages with tables.. the tables pull info from Nodes. I use taxonomy terms that have a nice URL (pathauto); I override the default taxonomy view, and replace it with mine (panels 2) in order to show a table. This works fine.
Problem 1:
I'd like to have a taxonomy term also belong to another vocabulary's term.. As in having a1 belong to (or be related to) b1 not in a child/parent sense but just in a related or equal sense.
I can relate terms within one vocabulary, so a1 and a2 can be related, but not a1 ans b1.
Again, had I used a node i could have had that node belong to both terms under these vocabularies a1 and b1, but my main navigational pages are taxonomy views/URLs. I use taxonomy to generate a side menu, people navigate via these links that take them to taxonomy pages that are overwritten with panels2.
Problem 2:
Another thing I'd like is to use a module to show similar terms in a block. With a node this works like a charm, I could use a module like "similar by term".. but since taxonomies cannot be related across vocabularies I cant get the taxonomy view to even show a block with similar taxonomy terms.
Actually, to make things more confusing, these blocks that show related terms for Nodes don't even appear if on taxonomy term view pages.
I've looked all over and can't find an answer.. If you could just give me hints or direct me in the right direction that'd be so awesome.
Sorry if these questions are stupid, we all have to start somewhere before we learn.
Thanks again.
The trick is to get a
The trick is to get a relationship plugin that will pull up relationships from term(s) a to term(s) b so that you can then pass that information to a view. Unfortunately, if it doesn't use the core 'related terms' facility, that relationship probably does not yet exist. Now, if you know PHP and a little bit about Drupal, the relationship plugins are actually reasonably easy to write. Essentially, you start with one object, and return another object.
The complication here is that panels 2 has some facility for a group of terms (as opposed to just a single term) but that facility was never really completed. What you really want, I would think, would be to get 'related terms from node' as a relationship, and then pass those related terms to a view. But the 'terms' context needs to be completed.
Thanks for your reply. I
Thanks for your reply.
Since Panels that override taxonomy do not offer some of Node features like allowing for related terms from different vocabularies or multiple parents.
If I used a Node page, CCK, instead of a panel this could solve the problem. The node can have multiple parents, and it can also have embedded views using the insert views module and other contrib modules like similar by term will work with it.
If I combine insert views (http://drupal.org/project/insert_view) with nodes or the viewfield module with CCK (http://drupal.org/project/viewfield) I can get what i need..
I can leave the navigation menu the way it is, derived from taxonomy terms, and I can give the Nodes aliases that overrite the taxonomy pathauto paths, this way the Nodes will replace the taxonomy view Panels pages.
Is this thought process correct or am I making a mistake. What do you think about this approach?
Any progress?
I' m struggling with essentially the same thing. I'm tagging nodes so that they would (I hope) define the contents of a matrix. As an example, vocabulary 1 might have compact cars, family sedans, luxury cars, and light trucks and vocabulary 2 might have GM, Ford, Nissan, Toyota. (In the real world, I'm actually working with the Zachman Framework but cars make an easier example).
I'd like to display three, maybe four, panels on the page:
Panel 1: a table view of the nodes in a specific cell in the matrix (e.g. Nissan+Light Trucks).
Panel 2: If I click one of the node links in Panel 1, it would load the actual content of the node in Panel 2.
Panel 3: This would display related nodes (defined using the Node Reference module) for the node in Panel 2. Clicking one of these links would load the content of the clicked node in Panel 2. This would also change Panel 1 to match the cell (taxonomy items) of the new node (e.g. Nissan+Compact Cars).
All I've managed to do so far is load a View in Panel 1. I have no PHP skills and the Panels documentation I've found so far hasn't been very helpful for what I'm trying to do. If anyone can suggest a way of doing this (without writing a module from scratch) or can point to a tutorial, I'd be very grateful.