Think about taxonomies

Boris Pocatko, Tomas Nosek

5 minutes

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In content modeling, there’s more to the picture than just content types – we have taxonomies to consider, too. Taxonomies serve a unique role in the content model, often fitting scenarios better than a content type might. In this lesson, you’ll be able to identify which content types represent lists that you can assign to other content items and grasp their relationships.

When you select the content types that serve as lists, such as categories, tags, segments, or any enumeration values, decide for each whether the content type should stay as a content type or a taxonomy, and you need to change it accordingly. You can also imagine taxonomies as a drop-down picker. Taxonomies and content types are suitable for different use cases. You can usually use taxonomies when you need an internal, invisible relationship between objects (for example, a persona or customer journey metadata), while content types are better for external, visible relationships observable on the front end (for example, blog authors or article CTAs). Use content types if you want to:

Localize the values and you want to display them on your multilingual website, app, or other media.
Let your content creators add new entries to the list of values.

On the other hand, use taxonomies if you want to:

Be able to

filter

based on the values in the content list in Kontent.ai.

Represent internal (invisible) relationships.

Prevent content creators from altering the list.

Global search for content items is also available, but filters are only available for taxonomy values.

You can model content types that you see as a 1:N relationship in a straightforward way. If content type A (e.g., Blog post) links to content type B (e.g., Author):

To create the options, create content items based on content type B (Author). Each item will represent one option.
Add a linked items element to content type A (Blog post) that will be limited to content type B (Author).
If suitable, limit the element so that content creators can only add a specific number of options.
Create a content item of content type A (Blog post), and link the related content items of type B (

Author

) to it to create their relationship.

If you want content type A to link again to content type A (for example, for related articles), start with step 2 directly.

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Divide lists into taxonomies and content types

Use content types and items for lists

Divide lists into taxonomies and content types

Use content types and items for lists

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If you want to jumpstart or get a direction on identifying taxonomies from content types, check out our content modeling accelerators.