Taxonomy in the Assistant listing

Thanks for your questions.

You asked “Can I create a custom taxonomy“. MLA does not have specific features for creating taxonomies, but it will support any taxonomy you create by other means. There are several plugins with a UI for creating taxonomies, but the PHP code is straightforward. You can adapt the code in an MLA example plugin for this purpose.

To view or download the example plugin, navigate to the Settings/Media library Assistant Documentation tab and click the “Example Plugins” button. Type “taxonomy” in the text box and click “Search Plugins” to filter the table.

You are looking for the “MLA Custom Taxonomy Example” plugin. Find that plugin and hover over the title in the left-most column. Click the “View” rollover action to look at the source code, or click the “Download” action to get a copy you can edit as needed,

Once you’ve created the taxonomy you can add support for it in MLA:

1. Navigate to the Settings/Media Library Assistant General tab.
2. Scroll down to the “Taxonomy Support” section.
3. Find your taxonomy in the list and select the MLA options you want for it.
4. Scroll to the bottom and click “Save Changes” to record your new settings.

Adding custom taxonomies to manage terms like “Colours” is a reasonable idea and not that hard to do. I hope the above suggestions give you a start on a solution for your application. I am marking this topic resolved, but please update it if you have problems or further questions regarding support for custom taxonomies in MLA.

Thanks for your clear and helpful instructions. So in the end I went with ACF to create the taxonomy which I already have.

The new taxonomy appears in the media edit screen and works but unfortunately there has been a unwanted change where all my ACF custom fields have been aggregated together under the ‘Custom fields’ metabox and have lost their functionality.

Is this something you’re familiar with?

The options I selected under “Taxonomy Support” are identical as for Att. Tags.

Thanks for your update. You wrote “unfortunately there has been a unwanted change where all my ACF custom fields have been aggregated together under the ‘Custom fields’ metabox and have lost their functionality.“

I activated ACF (free version) on my system and added a flat taxonomy. I went to the Media/Edit Media screen and updated one item with a new term; everything seems to work. My other ACF fields are still displayed above the Custom Fields metabox and are not affected. I do not know why you are having a problem with the ACF fields. Any additional details might help me investigate further.

Here’s a screenshot of the custom fields metabox where it appears my ACF fields have merged into.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JOpT4_WvZMSG1Bm-725Fi4QEEZgTPWeD/view?usp=drive_link

Clicking ‘Update’ has no effect and I’m not sure if I should delete the fields. The data I have in these particular fields is not important yet.

I will also see if ACF have some information.

Thanks,

Thanks for your update with the screen shot. It looks like you have a “Collection” repeater field with a nested “Single Subject” repeater field inside it; is that right?

I defined new fields to match yours as closely as possible and ran another test. On my system, the repeater fields are working properly. When I “Deactivate” the field, I get results that match yours, Reactivating the field restores proper operation.

You should carefully check your ACF group and field definitions to make sure they are correct and active. If your problem persists, following up with ACF support staff is probably the best next step. I don’t think MLA is involved, but I am open to new information.

Working through this according to ACF advice now, thanks for your efforts on this – much appreciated.

Also, can terms be transferred from my Att. Tags to my new taxonomy or must deleted/recreated?

Thank you for the new question and for your patience in awaiting my response.

Transferring term definitions and term assignments from one taxonomy to another can be a complicated business, and the current MLA version does not have a way to do it. I have been thinking about ways to add something that would work for you. One of the MLA example plugins has a lot of information (in its Documentation tab) about the issues involved, and I am thinking of adding features to this example plugin for a solution to your needs.

The “MLA Path Mapping Example” plugin lets you specify a complete, multi-level path for adding hierarchical term relationships to a taxonomy. The example plugin has a Settings screen with a Documentation tab that explains how to use it. In particular, the settings let you decide on which parts of the hierarchiy to assign to each item.

To install the example plugin, navigate to the Settings/Media library Assistant Documentation tab and click the “Example Plugins” button. You will see a table that lists all the example plugins and gives you a “one-click” action for installing them. Type “path mapping” in the text box (including the quotes) and click “Search Plugins” to filter the table. You are looking for “MLA Path Mapping Example” plugin. Find that plugin and hover over the title in the left-most column. Click the “Install” rollover action, then go to the WordPress Plugins/Installed Plugins submenu and activate it as you would any other plugin. Then, have a look at the Settings/MLA Path Mapping Documentation tab.

I am thinking of adding a “copy term definitions” from one taxonomy to another tool to this plugin. That solves the first part of your needs. Once that’s done a second tool, “copy term assignments’, would finish the job. I am also thinking of making the full-path term assignments available as a data source so you can use them in a mapping rule to do more selective term copy operations.

This will take some time but I believe it will be of benefit to many MLA users. What do you think?

Thanks for your patience while I worked on an initial version of tools to copy term definitions and assignments from one taxonomy to another.

I have uploaded a new MLA Development Version dated 20231129 that includes the updated MLA Path Mapping Example plugin. You can find step-by-step instructions for using the Development Version in this earlier topic:

How to download & install the current development version of MLA

Once the Development Version is installed you must install (or update) and activate the example plugin. Navigate to the Settings/Media library Assistant Documentation tab and click the “Example Plugins” button. Type “path mapping” in the text box and click “Search Plugins” to filter the table.

You are looking for the “MLA Path Mapping Example” plugin. Find that plugin and hover over the title in the left-most column. Click the “Install” (or “update”) rollover action, then go to the WordPress Plugins/Installed Plugins submenu and activate the example plugin as you would any other plugin. Make sure you have the latest version, 1.03, installed.

Once the Development Version and updated example plugin are installed and active you can try the new tools. I haven’t finished updating the Documentation tab yet, but the General tab should be self-explanatory.

This example plugin update will be part of my next MLA version, but in the interim it would be great if you could install the Development Version and the example plugin and let me know if it works for you. Thanks for inspiring this MLA improvement.

Sounds awesome David and it will surely be useful.

I manually recreated the terms in the new taxonomy a few weeks ago and that was cakewalk because there were only about 15-20 terms.

Also this new taxonomy is a sort of catch-all and eventually some terms within it will almost certainly need to be taken into another separate taxonomy once my own application has naturally evolved. So your developments here will probably save a lot of time for everyone.

I know this is probably a silly question because you’ve already put the link for ‘How to download & install the current development version of MLA’, but I wanted to double-check step ‘3. Find “Media Library Assistant” and delete it’. So I won’t lose any data as well as settings etc? (the only times I’ve deleted a plugin was when I didn’t want it back anymore ha ha)

Cheers,

• This reply was modified 11 months, 4 weeks ago by ratamatcat.