Nested Collections

Hi All,
i was wondering how many levels of sub collections can i create with the collection tree plugin?
How many levels down can i go?
can i create something looking like that?

Vehicles
Cars
Cadillac
Convertible

Thanks!

There is no limit.

We ran into a problem w/ nesting multiple levels of subcollections. Specifically, the plug-in creates empty browse pages displayed as folders on the hierarchy of the Collection Tree menu. For instance, in the example of "Vehicles" posted above, if a viewer who is browsing the subcollection "Convertible" clicks the "Cars" folder displayed on the Tree Menu, he/she will end up on a browse page containing no items.

Is there a tweak to prevent the plugin from displaying the empty subcollections levels on the Tree Menu? Or is this problem unrelated to the plugin itself (i.e., mea culpa).

Thanks.

I'm not getting what you mean. What behavior are you expecting exactly? When you say "browse page" do you mean the collections/show page or the items/browse page?

To answer your question, there is no tweak that removes collections that contain no items from the collection tree.

The example tree menu below might help clarify:

Vehicles
-Cars
--Cadillac
---Convertible (items: photo collection of Cadillac convertibles, 1948-2011)

The Show page for the "lowest" sub-collection (Convertible) contains the photo Items of interest to viewers while the Show pages of the subcollections nested "higher" on the Tree menu (Vehicles, Cars, Cadillac) simply contain the respective titles and description text.

Can the subcollections with no items be prevented from appearing on the main and secondary CollectionTree menus?

So, in your example you'd like

Vehicles
-Cars
--Cadillac
---Convertible

to look like

Vehicles
---Convertible

Is this correct? If so, I don't really understand the point. You'd be better off using tags to organize your items.

Is it accurate to say that you are using the nested collections as a kind of hierarchical taxonomy, like the nested categories in WordPress?

Patrick -- Sorry for the delayed reply. Yes, we are using CollectionTree plugin to provide viewers the option of a hierarchical taxonomy as distinct conceptually/visually from flat organization (e.g., tags). The model, though, is Zotero, the idea being to use Zotero's “recursiveCollections” hidden preference as a possible means of importing Zotero collections into Omeka in a hierarchical form mapped to the CollectionTree nested directory file structure.

I should have posed my question as a separate topic, as the subject is tangential to original inquiry posted by 'bacarchive' and too far a leap.

Got it. As Jim mentioned, there is a distinction in how tags vs. collections work in that regard. Collections are more about holding items to display together, whereas tags are more about labeling and searching for other items with the same label. We don't currently have something that will build a hierarchy of tags.