Taxonomies

Taxonomies are a system of classification commonly applied to News, Events, and General Posts in Arts CMS. Typically, we use taxonomies to organize our posts into related types, topics, categories, and tags.

This level of organization can help provide relevant content to our users on strategic pages on our website. Learn how you can use taxonomies on your website.


Taxonomy best practices

We encourage you to use as many taxonomies that make sense for each News and Events post, including types, topics, categories, and tags per post. The more organized your posts are, the easier it is for a user to find them on your website and will also help with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Generally, we’d recommend that you avoid having a long list of taxonomies. Based on Miller’s Magic Number, users are more likely to remember 5-9 similar items at a time. If we have a long list of taxonomies, it may be confusing for our users to identify and recognize the appropriate one. This will make it easier to organize and maintain on the backend for yourself.

Additionally, we should aim to keep our taxonomies mutually exclusive or separate from one another. This is especially important because of the multi-select feature of the dropdown types and topics menus. Instead of creating multiple types and topics that are phrased similarly, it is best practice to check off all types and topics that apply to your post. For example, if your News post is highlighting an undergraduate student’s achievements, you can apply the types Students, Accomplishments, and Spotlight.


How to add taxonomies

On the backend of your post, you will see four boxes on the right hand side of the visual editor. These are the types, topics, categories, and tags taxonomies. In order to add these to your post, simply check off all the boxes that apply to the post.


Types

Types taxonomies are available for News and Events posts and they appear as filtering options on the News and Events archive page dropdown menus.

Types are standard across the academic unit websites on Arts CMS and generally describe the type of News or Events post. In addition to the standard taxonomies below, your unit may have custom taxonomies unique to your department and users.

Types taxonomies to generally describe a News post:

  • In the Media
  • Student
  • Announcement
  • Achievement
  • Research
  • Alumni
  • Spotlight
  • Publication
  • Faculty
  • Event Highlight

Types taxonomies to generally describe an Events post:

  • Conference
  • Alumni
  • Lecture
  • Seminar
  • Student
  • Talk
  • Workshop

Topics

Topics are available for News and Events posts and they appear as a filtering option on the News and Events archive page dropdown menus.

Topics should reflect the research areas or areas of interest of your unit. Ideally, they would be aligned with the Research Areas dropdown on the People page to create consistency across the site.

You should use the Topics taxonomies to describe your News or Events post if it is related to one or more specific topics.


Categories

Categories are a strategic filter available for News, Events, and General posts. They do not appear on the front-end of any archive page, but are used for featuring specific posts on various pages of your site.

We recommend that you use this taxonomy to organize posts for strategic pages through the Featured News and Events module, a Post Archive, or the Homepage carousel.


Tags

Tags are available for News, Events, and General posts, but they do not appear on any archive page. Instead, they will appear at the bottom of the post under the Tagged With section. Tags add additional context to posts and are searchable within the website and search engines.

The most common use case on Arts CMS is adding a tag for a specific Faculty profile. For example, tagging a news or events post with a name will enable all users to find all related posts with the same tag.


Featuring News and Events

The Featured News and Events module allows you to feature news or events posts on strategic pages. Using a category, type, topic, or tag, the Featured News and Events module will pull the most recent posts in that taxonomy and display them directly on a page. Please note that you can only set up the module to pull posts from one of these taxonomies.


Tutorial

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