Model your taxonomies the right way

Jan Cerman, Jake Kula

12 minutes

If you already know what taxonomies you want in your project, it’s time to bring them to life. With taxonomies, you can start tagging your content items and assets. Once your content is properly tagged, you find it quicker and boost your productivity.

Choose the taxonomy approach that works for you

You can create taxonomies in Kontent.ai using either the built-in taxonomies or linked items.

The approach to choose depends on your specific requirements.

Requirement	Built-in taxonomies	Linked items
Build a sitemap	✅	✅
Control who can edit the terms without access to the content model	❌	✅
Enhance terms with contextual details like scope and definition	❌	✅
Find assets and content items by a term	✅	❌
Limit the number of terms to a range	✅	✅
Limit the number of terms to exactly one	✅	✅
Tag assets with a term	✅	❌
Tag content items with a term	✅	✅
Set the taxonomy terms as non-localizable	✅	✅
Use a flat hierarchy (terms on the same level)	✅	✅
Use a nested hierarchy (terms on different levels)	✅	❌
Localize terms	❌	✅

Built-in taxonomies for flexibility and findability

The built-in taxonomy groups are the most intuitive and easiest approach to implementing taxonomies in Kontent.ai. The benefits? You can tag items and assets, find the items and assets by your tags, and create complex nested taxonomies. It takes three things:

Creating a taxonomy group
Adding a taxonomy element to your content types
Tagging your content items

See the article about built-in taxonomies for more details on how to create it.

In the following video, Jake Kula, our Presales Engineer, will go over taxonomies and how to use them.

Linked items for permissions and added context

If you need to add extra contextual details to your taxonomies, let content creators update them, or localize the terms, you need to implement your taxonomy using linked items.What you'll need:

A content type that defines your taxonomy
Content items based on the type that defines the taxonomy terms
Linked items element in the items you want to tag

Choose the taxonomy approach that works for you

You can create taxonomies in Kontent.ai using either the built-in taxonomies or linked items.

The approach to choose depends on your specific requirements.

Requirement	Built-in taxonomies	Linked items
Build a sitemap	✅	✅
Control who can edit the terms without access to the content model	❌	✅
Enhance terms with contextual details like scope and definition	❌	✅
Find assets and content items by a term	✅	❌
Limit the number of terms to a range	✅	✅
Limit the number of terms to exactly one	✅	✅
Tag assets with a term	✅	❌
Tag content items with a term	✅	✅
Set the taxonomy terms as non-localizable	✅	✅
Use a flat hierarchy (terms on the same level)	✅	✅
Use a nested hierarchy (terms on different levels)	✅	❌
Localize terms	❌	✅

Built-in taxonomies for flexibility and findability

The built-in taxonomy groups are the most intuitive and easiest approach to implementing taxonomies in Kontent.ai. The benefits? You can tag items and assets, find the items and assets by your tags, and create complex nested taxonomies. It takes three things:

Creating a taxonomy group
Adding a taxonomy element to your content types
Tagging your content items

See the article about built-in taxonomies for more details on how to create it.

In the following video, Jake Kula, our Presales Engineer, will go over taxonomies and how to use them.

Linked items for permissions and added context

If you need to add extra contextual details to your taxonomies, let content creators update them, or localize the terms, you need to implement your taxonomy using linked items.What you'll need:

A content type that defines your taxonomy
Content items based on the type that defines the taxonomy terms
Linked items element in the items you want to tag

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Choosing in the nutshellChoose linked items if you need at least one of the following:

Content creators need to manage the tags
More information is required to express the relationship
Terms need to be localized

In all other cases, use built-in taxonomies.

Even untagged content can be filteredUse the ø Not in filter to quickly find and filter untagged content in the content inventory.

Choose the taxonomy approach that works for you

Built-in taxonomies for flexibility and findability

Linked items for permissions and added context