Using Taxonomy and Vocabulary

Taxonomy: Your YaleSites Superpower

Unlock better navigation, searchability, and content relationships

Taxonomy is a powerful way to organize and classify your website content. Taxonomies help you create logical connections between related content, making information more discoverable for your visitors and enhancing your site’s overall usability.

illustration of man on two way path with signs

Understanding the Taxonomy System

Three terms define the system:

Taxonomy is the overall system for organizing and classifying content on your site.
Vocabularies are organized collections of related terms — for example, “Post Categories” or “Audience.” Each vocabulary has a specific purpose and scope.
Terms are the individual keywords or phrases within a vocabulary — for example, “Graduate Students” within the Audience vocabulary, or “Humanities & Arts” within a Page Categories vocabulary.

Taxonomy in the Admin Content menu screenshot — Go to Content>Manage Taxonomy

Finding and Editing Your Taxonomies

To access taxonomy settings on YaleSites:

Log in with your NetID
Navigate to the top admin bar
Go to Content > Manage Taxonomy
View and edit your available vocabularies

Once you have created your terms, those terms are available to add to your content under the Manage Settings.

See Manage Settings

Default Vocabularies on YaleSites

YaleSites comes with several built-in vocabularies:

Think of taxonomy as a filing system that makes your digital content easier to find, connect, and display. Each content type has taxonomies designed for its specific needs.

Vocabularies

Displaying Content Using Taxonomy and View Blocks

Taxonomy powers the view block display on YaleSites.

Taxonomy powers the View Block display on YaleSites. View Blocks are dynamic content display tools that pull content from other parts of your site based on the taxonomy terms you’ve applied. This means your content displays update automatically when new content is added and tagged — no manual page editing required.

Discover View Blocks Vocabularies

Planning Your Taxonomy Strategy

The most common taxonomy mistake is adding terms without a plan and ending up with an inconsistent, hard-to-maintain vocabulary. A little strategy upfront saves a lot of cleanups later.

Before You Create Any Terms

Identify which vocabularies apply to your content types and use cases
Decide whether you need the Custom vocabulary — or whether a built-in vocabulary already covers your needs
Draft your term list and review it: are the terms relevant, concise, and specific enough to be meaningful?
Decide which vocabularies will be exposed as visitor-visible filters and which will work as internal hooks

Applying Terms Consistently

Establish a shared tagging guide if multiple people manage your site
Apply terms consistently — the same content should always receive the same terms

Set a regular cadence for reviewing and pruning your vocabularies as your content evolves

Filter Planning

When designing View Blocks that use taxonomy filters, keep these rules in mind:

You can combine filters from different vocabularies — for example, Audience: Graduate Students AND Page Category: Science
You cannot filter by two parent terms within the same vocabulary simultaneously — for example, you cannot filter Page Category: Program AND Page Category: Research at the same time
Parent/child relationships let you create more granular filtering within a single vocabulary — plan your term hierarchy before you build your views

Why Taxonomy Matters

Effective taxonomy on your YaleSite:

Improves navigation and user experience
Enhances internal search functionality
Creates meaningful relationships between content
Helps with search engine optimization
Makes content management more efficient
Supports better social media and external sharing

Need Help Getting Started?

The YaleSites team is here to support your digital experience efforts: