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Features / Usability

Features / Usability


Categories vs Structure

posts: 12

Hello, I have a general useage question to better understand how to set up a Wiki site.

Is it generally more common to use indented categories to provide structure and navigation to a site, or to use the Structure system? Under what circumstances would I be better using one over the other?

I know Structure gives me a TOC that can be inserted in a doc,but with Categories you get a seperate expand/colapse tree.

Do these usually co-exist? or does someone pick one or the other?

Is there a comparison between the two and some guide on how to choose best use them?

posts: 104 France

Personnally, I would suggest using both. They are not really the same thing. A structure can be thought of as the chapters of a book. They are only ever in one place at a time. Categories on the other hand are much more flexible, and can be thought of more as a kind of "index of ideas". The same page can be in multiple categories, and multiple categories can point to one page.

So it depends a bit on what your site is like - if there is a lot of information that is confusing to navigate, then categories will be a great help.

Be warned though: you need to think carefully about how you set them up!

posts: 12

joelg wrote:
> Be warned though: you need to think carefully about how you set them up!'


Is there any documentation that gives some guidelines or identifies the what some of the pitfalls are?

Is there a way to get the category administration interface to present pages that have not been categorized, or to present pages by existing category? ie: I want to use categories to help filter or find the pages that I want to apply to apply to other categories or structure.


posts: 12

joelg wrote:
> Be warned though: you need to think carefully about how you set them up!'


Is there any documentation that gives some guidelines or identifies the what some of the pitfalls are?

Is there a way to get the category administration interface to present pages that have not been categorized, or to present pages by existing category? ie: I want to use categories to help filter or find the pages that I want to apply to apply to other categories or structure.


posts: 2881 United Kingdom

Structures only apply to wikipages.

Think of structures as an index to a book. for example see the http://doc.tikiwiki.org site Documentation page for a good example.

Categories link all Tiki contents together. Good example is my personal site http://damian.parkersworld.org where I use categories as the main form of navigation.

Damian


posts: 17 United States

Another layer that could cross both Structures and Categories would be Groups and Group Security.

I would be interested in securing or limiting access to entire Categories or Structures based on who you are. Conceptually I think this is all possible, but as a new Tikiwiki user, I'm totally confused as to how to apply this via the Admin console.

For example, ONE TW site could contain all the documentation for various projects for various clients:

Group:Client 1 (all below only visible to this group)
Structure:Intranet Project Category: Intranet
1.0 blah
1.1 blah
1.2 blah
1.3 blah

Group:Client 2 (all below only visible to this group)
Structure:Document Management Project Category: Documents
1.0 blah
1.1 blah
1.2 blah
1.3 blah

Group:Client 3 (all below only visible to this group)
Structure:Excel Macro Tool Category: Finance
1.0 blah
1.1 blah
1.2 blah
1.3 blah

Finally, I'm totally unclear on how you SHOW MENUS on the left/right columns that are {toc] of either all Categories or all Structure items.


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