Overview

How to create a taxonomy that lets users filter archive content by tags in the City metadata field.

Enabling the taxonomy

First off, you would go to the Site configuration in FotoWeb, open Metadata sheet under Site settings and enable taxonomies for the city field. You also need to type in a plural name, which will be used as the taxonomy's header in the user interface ("Cities")

Next, you would enable taxonomy navigation on the archive you wish to use it with: 

Open the archive's properties, go to the Metadata tab, and enable Taxonomy navigation. Then, tick the City field to use that taxonomy with the archive.

Defining taxonomy content

Now, log on to FotoWeb with your user account. Note that you must have Manage taxonomy privileges to be able to edit taxonomy content.

Since there is a fair chance that the list of cities can become quite long and hard to navigate, we'll create a taxonomy that starts at the Country level; that is, we'll create node at the top that contains country names and define cities per country. That should make it easier for users to navigate.

The country node itself will only be a navigation container - users can see and click it, but clicking it will only display the cities listed underneath. Then, when a user clicks one or more cities, the actual filtering will be applied.

Note: The procedure described below is based on the main interface. In the Pro interface, you open the archive and click on the Filters tab in the left side panel to display the taxonomies. From there on the procedure is very similar to what's described below.

Start by selecting Add term and adding a country name. In this example, we will use England. When the term appears in the list, point on the entry and click on the pencil icon to bring up its properties.

Then, in the access properties, make sure you remove Query and Set permissions. This ensures that the England node will simply be a Navigation container for users. Select OK.

Next, click on the England node to enter it. Then click on Add term to add a city to the England node.

Do this three times, filling in the names of three cities, such as London, Manchester, and Liverpool.

A note: These three entries will by default have Navigation, Query and Set permissions. Technically you just need Navigation and Query for this exercise, since Set is used only for metadata quicklists.

Now you're ready to start using the taxonomy: The Cities taxonomy starts with England - click it to display the three cities you made. You'll notice that nothing changes in the grid of assets. Now, tick one of the cities. The filter is applied, and all files matching the criterion are shown. You can then tick another city and display the combined result of those two filters.