CMF Topics present a way of defining a canned catalog query. They help organize a site into dynamically executed searches according to a set of static criteria defined by the person who created or configured the Topic.
Visitors to a particular Topic will see its results, and also links to any subtopics, which may use their parent topics criteria to further refine a search. Clicking on any particular result will lead to the item. Of course, being skinnable, this behavior may be altered by the site designer as needed.
The configurer (the creator and anyone generally enabled to configure CMF Topics according to site policy) configures the Topic by adding criterion and setting the values. The current set of criteria include simple String, Integer, and List, as well as some Date criterion. Subtopics may be nested for cumulative refinement.