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TYPO3 Extension: Semantic Suggestion

Elevate your TYPO3 website with intelligent, content-driven recommendations.

Introduction

The Semantic Suggestion extension revolutionizes the way related content is presented on TYPO3 websites. Moving beyond traditional category-based functionalities, this extension employs semantic analysis to create genuinely relevant content connections.

Since version 2.0.0, similarity scores are stored in a dedicated database table (tx_semanticsuggestion_similarities) instead of the TYPO3 cache. A Scheduler task handles calculation and storage, ensuring persistence and performance.

Key Benefits:

• Highly Relevant Links: Automatically generates connections based on actual content similarity.
• Increased User Engagement: Keep visitors on your site longer by offering truly related content.
• Semantic Cocoon: Contributes to a high-quality semantic network, enhancing SEO and navigation.
• Intelligent Automation: Reduces manual linking work while improving internal link quality.

Performance Considerations

• The similarity calculation process performed by the Scheduler task can take time, especially on sites with a large number of pages (>500 pages might require 30s or more depending on the server).
• Displaying suggestions and statistics (reading from the database) is optimized.
• Use the backend module to assess the performance and relevance of suggestions for your specific setup.

New in Version 2.0.0

Database Storage

• Similarity scores are now stored in the tx_semanticsuggestion_similarities table.
• Enhanced data persistence (survives cache clearing).
• Improved performance for large websites.

Scheduler Task

• A new Scheduler task (Semantic Suggestion: Generate Similarities) automates similarity calculation.
• Configure the frequency and execution time (ideally during off-peak hours).
• Easily maintain up-to-date suggestions without manual intervention.

Stopwords Support and Debug Mode

• Improved analysis with support for "stopwords" for multiple languages.
• Added a debug mode toggleable via TypoScript (plugin.tx_semanticsuggestion_suggestions.settings.debugMode = 1) for development and troubleshooting.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Features
• Requirements
• Installation
• Configuration
  • TypoScript Settings
  • Scheduler Task Settings
  • Configuration Interaction
• Usage (Frontend)
• Backend Module
• Scheduler Task
• Similarity Logic (Simplified)
• Display Customization
• Multilingual Support
• Debugging
• Contributing
• License
• Support

Features

• Analyzes subpages of a specified parent page via a Scheduler task.
• Stores similarity scores in a database table (tx_semanticsuggestion_similarities).
• Scheduler task to automate calculations and updates of similarities.
• Displays suggestions (title, media, excerpt) on the frontend by reading from the database.
• Backend module showing detailed statistics read from the database.
• Highly configurable via TypoScript (display, analysis parameters) and Scheduler (analysis scope, storage threshold).
• Built-in multilingual support.
• Option to exclude specific pages from analysis (Scheduler) and/or display (TypoScript).

Requirements

• TYPO3 12.0.0 - 13.9.99
• PHP 8.0 or higher

Installation

Configuration

The extension's configuration is split between TypoScript settings and Scheduler task settings.

TypoScript Settings (setup.typoscript)

These settings primarily control the frontend display and the details of the analysis algorithm. Define them in your TypoScript Setup file under plugin.tx_semanticsuggestion_suggestions.settings.

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Scheduler Task Settings

These settings are defined directly in the TYPO3 Scheduler module interface when creating/editing the "Semantic Suggestion: Generate Similarities" task. They control the analysis execution and what gets stored in the database.

• Start Page ID: The UID of the root page from which the subpage analysis will begin. This defines the scope of the analysis for this task run. Each task execution is linked to a Start Page ID (stored as root_page_id in the DB).
• Pages to exclude: Comma-separated list of page UIDs that will not be analyzed, and their similarities will not be stored.
• Minimum similarity threshold: Threshold (0.0 to 1.0) below which a pair of similar pages will not be saved to the database. This is the minimumSimilarity used for storage.

Configuration Interaction

• Analysis Scope: Defined by the Scheduler task's Start Page ID.
• DB Storage: Controlled by the Scheduler task's Minimum similarity threshold and Pages to exclude.
• Similarity Calculation: Performed by the PageAnalysisService (called by the Cron task), which uses the TypoScript settings analyzedFields and recencyWeight.
• Frontend Display: Reads from the DB and filters/limits based on the TypoScript settings proximityThreshold, maxSuggestions, excludePages.
• Backend Display: Reads from the DB (based on the selected root_page_id) and filters based on the TypoScript proximityThreshold.

Key Points:

• The proximityThreshold (TypoScript) cannot display suggestions with a score lower than the minimumSimilarity (Scheduler) because they were not saved. For the TypoScript setting to be effective, it must be ≥ the Scheduler threshold.
• A page excluded in the Scheduler will never be analyzed/stored. A page excluded only in TypoScript will be analyzed/stored (if not excluded in Scheduler) but not displayed. It's often simpler to keep the excludePages lists synchronized.
• You can create multiple Scheduler tasks with different Start Page IDs to analyze different sections of the site.

Usage (Frontend)

Integrate the plugin into your Fluid templates to display suggestions:

Ensure the following TypoScript is included in your setup:

The plugin will read relevant suggestions for the current page from the database, applying filters defined in the TypoScript settings (proximityThreshold, maxSuggestions, excludePages).

Backend Module

A backend module ("Semantic Suggestion" under "Web") allows visualizing the results of the analyses stored in the database.

Features

• Analysis Selection: Choose which analysis to view (based on the Start Page ID / root_page_id of executed Scheduler tasks).
• Detailed Statistics: Most similar pairs, score distribution, pages with the most links, language statistics.
• Configuration Overview: Reminder of the main parameters used (display threshold, etc.).
• Performance Metrics (Basic): Module load time, number of stored pairs for the selected analysis.

Scheduler Task

The "Semantic Suggestion: Generate Similarities" task is essential for the extension's operation.

• Role: Calculates similarities between pages (using PageAnalysisService) and saves relevant results (above the minimumSimilarity threshold) to the tx_semanticsuggestion_similarities table.
• Configuration: Set the Start Page ID, Pages to exclude, and Minimum similarity threshold via the Scheduler interface.
• Frequency: Schedule its execution regularly (e.g., daily, weekly) during off-peak hours to keep suggestions up-to-date without impacting site performance.

Similarity Logic (Simplified)

1. Execution (Scheduler Task): The Scheduler task selects pages to analyze based on its Start Page ID and exclusions.
2. Analysis (PageAnalysisService): For each page pair, the service calculates a similarity score based on the content of fields defined in analyzedFields (TypoScript), considering their respective weights and stopwords. An adjustment based on recency (recencyWeight TypoScript) is applied.
3. Storage (Scheduler Task): The task saves pairs whose final score is greater than or equal to the minimumSimilarity (Scheduler) to the tx_semanticsuggestion_similarities table.
4. Display (Frontend/Backend): The modules read scores from the database and apply the proximityThreshold (TypoScript) for the final display.

Display Customization

Modify the appearance of suggestions by overriding the plugin's Fluid template (List.html). Configure the paths to your custom templates in TypoScript (see Configuration section).

Multilingual Support

The extension accounts for TYPO3's multilingual structure. The Scheduler task analyzes and stores similarities for each configured site language. The frontend displays suggestions corresponding to the current language.

Debugging

• Enable debugMode = 1 in TypoScript settings to get detailed logs in typo3temp/logs/semantic_suggestion.log.
• Monitor the execution of the Scheduler task in the corresponding backend module.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Fork the repository, create a branch, make your changes, and submit a Pull Request.

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v2.0 or later. See the LICENSE file.

Support

Contact: Wolfangel Cyril ([email protected]) Bugs & Features: GitHub Issues Documentation & Updates: GitHub Repository