Taxonomy is the process of classifying information. In Drupal, it’s also a powerful core module that allows you to assign labels to your content according to whichever patterns make the most sense for your site.
Let’s take a look at the different ways you can leverage taxonomies within a Drupal site and go over some best practices that’ll help you build your own system.
Tip: If you want to play around with Drupal taxonomies, set up a free test site on Pantheon, deploy the most recent version of Drupal, and choose the Umami demo installation. You’ll get a prebuilt recipe site with some taxonomies already in place to help you quickly get started.
What are taxonomies used for?
Taxonomies are the backbone of everything from navigation menus to views and display options.
You can use them in workflows and to manage access to different types of content within your organization.
The main use for taxonomies, in most cases, is to relate pieces of content together—in a recipe site, you might want to organize by cuisine or by main ingredient, for example. Creating taxonomy vocabularies will enable you to do this.
How taxonomies work in Drupal
In Drupal, the taxonomy system (which you’ll find under Content ➜ Structure in the Admin menu) is made up of vocabularies, which each comprise a series of terms. For example, “red”, “blue”, and “green” are terms you might find in a “Colours” vocabulary.
To illustrate this, here’s a snapshot of some of the vocabularies and terms that might be involved in a recipe site.
Notice that you can easily create hierarchies within your sets of terms. In our above example, Cuisine is broken down into continents, then further into individual cultural origins. To do this in Drupal, first create the parent term. Next, create the child term and scroll to the Relations toggle, where you’ll be able to select the appropriate parent.
Child and parent terms can provide extra flexibility, for example by allowing visitors to either browse all dessert recipes or peruse only pie recipes, depending on what they’re looking for. Nested taxonomies can be a bit tricky, though—more on that (and the four letters that can fix it) in a bit.
Structuring your site’s taxonomies
Recipe sites are a convenient way to illustrate the concept of taxonomies, but your site is probably a bit more complicated. So how do you figure out taxonomies for your content? Here are some tips.
Define your ‘things’
What types of information are featured on your site? In other words, what’s your business’s equivalent to Cuisines, Meals, and Dish types?
If you have a blog or other educational content (product documentation, for example), that’s a good place to start. Your blog covers all sorts of different topics—break them down into around 5 main themes, and you’ve got yourself the terms you need for a Category vocabulary.
Some posts are tutorials and others are interviews? Maybe you need a “Post types” vocabulary. Do you have videos, ebooks, checklists, or other types of resources? That looks like a “Formats” vocabulary. You get the idea! Card-sorting workshops are a great way to figure this type of thing out with your team.
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