What is Taxonomy?

Taxonomy is a useful way to categorize and organize how content that is displayed on your site. Terms are organized into groups called “vocabularies.” For example, a vocabulary called “Fruit” would contain the terms “Apple” and “Banana.” Taxonomies appear throughout many of the website’s content Edit screens.

**Content types in the Template share a universal taxonomy called "Categories". In addition, each content type has its own dedicated taxonomy.

Since taxonomy structure is important to the overall site structure, only users with an elevated user role in the Drupal system can add or edit Taxonomy Terms. See User Roles for more information.

Creating a Taxonomy Term

STEP 1 - Locate the taxonomy vocabulary

From the admin toolbar, click Structure.

Click Taxonomy to begin creating your list of vocabulary terms.

The list of available taxonomy "vocabularies" will display.

STEP 2 – Add a term

Click list terms to view the list of terms already associated with a vocabulary or add terms to add a new term.

Alternatively, click + Add term located at the top of the page to add a new term.

Add a name for the vocabulary term. This is the only required field.

Click Save. 

You will be presented with another form -- this is because the system is anticipating that you will be adding another term. If you are done, click the tab in the upper right named List. Your new term should appear in the list.

Optional – order the terms by dragging and dropping.

STEP 3 – Save

Click Save at the bottom of the screen.

Adding Taxonomy Terms to your Content

After you complete the above steps, the taxonomy terms are now available to add to your content.

• Create a new content page or find an existing one and edit.
• Place your cursor in the appropriate category box and the list of available taxonomy terms will appear
• Select the appropriate term.
• Save.

Nested Taxonomy Terms

Taxonomy terms can have nested terms. For example, a Person Taxonomy can contain these terms:

• Faculty
  • Affiliated
  • Visiting
• Staff
  • Part-time
  • Full-time

If you choose to show “Staff” in a pane, then both Part-time and Full-time people will be displayed. 

Site-wide Taxonomy Terms

Site-wide taxonomy terms are used across several content types. They allow you to organize various content types using the same taxonomy. Some examples of its usage:

• Create a page of Events, News, and People all tagged with the term "engineering"
• Display research areas on a Person's detail page (the research areas are the site-wide taxonomy)

To use this feature, you must first add the taxonomy terms. Then edit the content type.