Difference between Tags, att tags, product tags, picture tags

Thanks for an interesting question regarding the sources and use of taxonomies in a WordPress/WooCommerce site.

You asked “What is the difference between them? Which apply where?”

Taxonomies can be created by WordPress, themes or plugins. WordPress defines “Categories”, “Tags” and a legacy taxonomy, “Link Categories”. Like many plugins, MLA adds taxonomies of its own for your convenience; “Att. Categories” and “Att. Tags”. WooCommerce adds “Product Categories” and “Product Tags” (confusingly labeled Categories and Tags in the Products submenu). WooCommerce also adds “Product Color” and “Product License” to support its Products/Attributes feature. I don’t know where the “Picture tag” taxonomy on your site comes from; I haven’t seen it elsewhere.

MLA provides the “Att.” taxonomies because most users want to separate Media Library classification from post/page classification. Because WordPress does not extend taxonomy support to Media Library items (“attachments”) there can be problems using the same taxonomies and terms for all of these objects. Many users, however, have worked out applications that manage all objects with the WordPress taxonomies and MLA allows you to do that. In fact, MLA includes the “Smart Media Categories” example plugin to make that easier.

Which taxonomies you use depends on how WordPress, your theme and your plugins support/use them. For example, you can add “Product Tag” support to your Media Library items, but WooCommerce will not use that information; it only uses those taxonomies for Products. MLA’s “WooCommerce Fixit” example plugin has a number of tools to manage various taxonomy term operations for Products and Media Library items.

You asked “Is the best solution to map the IPTC keywords (replace) to all 4 taxonomies?” That’s not unreasonable but might complicate things a bit. Depending on the context, WordPress will use one of four different values to identify a specific term: 1) term name, 2) term slug, 3) term ID, or 4) term-taxonomy ID. Older WordPress versions used “shared terms”, using the same term ID for terms appearing in multiple taxonomies and used the term-taxonomy ID to distinguish them. Recent WordPress versions and sites like yours assign unique term ID values even if the same term name and slug appear in multiple taxonomies.

When mapping from an IPTC Keyword to a taxonomy term the Keyword becomes the term name. WordPress creates the term slug by simplifying the term name, then assigns a unique term ID (and term-taxonomy ID). In many places, such as taxonomy search parameters in [mla_gallery] you can use either the slug or the ID. You just have to remember that the slug will be the same for all taxonomies but the ID will be different. It’s a minor problem, just something to be aware of.

That is a long answer to your question, but as you wrote it might be of interest to anyone trying to understand the subject. I am marking this topic resolved, but please update it if you have any problems or further questions regarding the subject.

Thank you David for your detailed answer. Everything is much clearer now.

From the explanation I want 1- That the IPTC data goes to the product tags of WooCommerce so that clients can locate the images and 2- Be able to search inside my Media any image quickly if i want to change it update it or erase it the MLA tags might be the best option.

But from here 2 more questions arise:

1- Product tags: Once the IPTC is matched to this taxonomy will the added images to WooCommerce directly or by Spreadsheet (CSV) recognize those product tags automatically or do I still need that “example WooCommerce plugin” you mention so that WooCommerce “imports” or “understands” those products tags.

2- As I have been playing with images with those assigned tags from IPTC I see that the tags (don’t remember if they were the product tags/picture tags-the ones I selected to match) if I remove the images they remain in the MLA (section tags). If I want to bulk remove you can select a list of 20 or so and remove but this took long for 35 pages of tags (only from 450 images) so is there a quicker method like “remove all tags”.

Kind regards

Cristian

I know now where the picture tag comes from : “WPvivid Plugins – Image Optimization”
I saw this on their plugin option installed on my site (I use this one for optimizing my images): ” Use picture tag (Does not support images in CSS)”

Kind regards

Cristian

I now can find my images in the Media section of WP with the tags. I have finally mapped the IPTC keywords to Tags Att Tags and Product Tags.

But when I import an image to WooCommerce from the library, those product tags are still not shown on the product tags of the product ???♂?

So I installed that Woocommerce Fixit plugin to see if it would make a difference and activated it. No difference. The WooCommerce product still does not show up any keywords in the product section .

I see in the plugin section that there should be a submenu created anywhere, but I have not found it after 1 hour looking inside the WooCommerce products and also the Media tab in WP. Where does this “submenu” live and what does it do? Is this a fix to the product tags mapped taxonomy not showings in the product tag in Woo.

The level of complexity of all this is really astonishing. And I have not even started to put my first shortcode anywhere. Too afraid ???? No I will not go this shortcode route as reading the documentation it seems that’s for people knowing more advanced coding or the sintaxis of WP which I don’t know. It is just out of my league, but it seems really granular of all the things you can do if you know how to write all those instructions.

But as MLA integrates well with Real Media I will just create folders of searched images (thanks to the mapped tags function of MLA) and place them in whatever post or page I need. I think this will be a much simpler solution than to learn all the different instruction of shortcodes.

In any case without your knowledge and help I would be totally in the dark and now I am slowly grasping on how this works, kind of…..??

Best regards

Cristian

Thanks for your updates regarding the progress you are making and the additional questions.

You asked “will the added images to WooCommerce directly or by Spreadsheet (CSV) recognize those product tags automatically?” Once you define a mapping rule and check the “Enable IPTC/EXIF Mapping when adding new media” box the rule will be applied as items are added to the Media Library. Existing items can be mapped from the Settings/Media Library Assistant IPTC/EXIF tab by executing the rule with the “Execute All Rules” button or the “Execute” rollover action on the individual rule(s). The “WooCommerce Fixit” example plugin does not play any role in this process.

You asked “If I want to bulk remove you can select a list of 20 or so and remove but this took long for 35 pages of tags (only from 450 images) so is there a quicker method like “remove all tags”?” I assume you are referring to the taxonomy term editing screen. You can pull down the “Screen Options” menu and increase the “Number of items per page:” to something like 100. That will make bulk removal much quicker.

You wrote “But when I import an image to WooCommerce from the library, those product tags are still not shown on the product tags of the product.” That is correct. There is no automatic way to assign keywords/terms found in the Media Library items to a Product they are associated with. The “WooCommerce Fixit” example plugin provides several “tools” to help you do this assignment manually. Here is an earlier topic similar to yours:

Woocommerce product tags?

The “WooCommerce Fixit” example plugin evolved over several years in response to support topics like that one. It adds a “Woo Fixit” submenu item to the Tools menu. Go to the Tools/Woo Fixit submenu to see the available tools. In particular, look for the “Operations on Products, using the Product Image, Product Tags and Att. Tags” and “Operations on Products, using the Product Image, Product Categories and Att. Tags” tool sections. The tools in these sections let you copy terms from the Att. Tags taxonomy of the products’ “Product Image” to the corresponding Products Product Tag or Product Category terms.

The Product Tag tools copy Att. Tags terms without checking if they already exist as Product Tags. The Product Category tools will only copy an Att. Tag value if it already exists as a Product Category, using the Name (not the slug) to test for an exact match.

Here are the “Operations on Products, using the Product Image, Product Tags and Att. Tags”:

• Clear – Delete ALL Product Tags assignments where a Product Image exists.
• Fill – Fill empty Product Tags assignments from Product Image Att. Tags where a Product Image exists.
• Add – Append Product Tags assignments to ALL Products from Product Image Att. Tags where a Product Image exists.
• Replace – Replace ALL Product Tags assignments from Product Image Att. Tags where a Product Image exists.

As you can see, the tools use the WooCommerce “Product Image” and “Product Gallery” as the source of data such as terms. They do not operate on items simply “attached” to a product. As I stated, the tools allow you to perform a variety of tasks on a manual basis. I regret that I have not had the time to develop any (more complex) automatic synchronization logic.

I agree that “The level of complexity of all this is really astonishing.” I appreciate your persistance in climbing the learning curve, and I can see how the many parameters of the MLA shortcodes would be daunting. You wrote:

But as MLA integrates well with Real Media I will just create folders of searched images (thanks to the mapped tags function of MLA) and place them in whatever post or page I need. I think this will be a much simpler solution than to learn all the different instruction of shortcodes.

Let me point out that adding the searched images or RML folder content is quite easy with [mla_gallery]. You can code something like:

[mla_gallery mla_rml_folder=23] or [mla_gallery attachment_tag=some-term-slug]

That’s all you need for a simple gallery on a post/page.

I hope the above explaination helps you understand the benefits and limitations of the “WooCommerce Fixit” example plugin. If you have problems or further questions regarding how to use it please post an update and we can continue the dialog.

I have released MLA v3.05, which contains a small change to the “WooCommerce Fixit” example plugin that makes it easier to find the Tools/Woo Fixit submenu page.

The new version restores a “Tools” link to the plugin entry in the Plugins/Installed Plugins page. Your difficulty in finding the submenu alerted me to this problem, and I appreciate your report.