Large amounts of content can be an organizational nightmare, and it takes a far-reaching categorization model to allow content to be efficiently repurposed, searched for, and organized on a site. Ektron’s taxonomy, a one-to-many relationship model, follows natural and organic methods all the way down to the content level, enabling an intuitive organization scheme that reflects how people think.
Click the following link to see a video introduction to taxonomy in Ektron CMS400.NET: http://documentation.ektron.com/video/taxonomy/taxonomy.html.
Ektron’s taxonomy is a content-level categorization system that uses one-to-many relationships to create a scalable organization of content. Content is categorized in the database by how it relates to multiple categories, allowing it to be accessed in multiple ways for multiple purposes. The hierarchy of the content is arranged from the general to the specific, and there may be multiple “routes” that define the content at the end of the hierarchy.
This type of categorization lets you create a navigation structure (independent of the folder structure) that matches the way different site visitors want to find what they are looking for.
For example, Arnold Schwarzenegger can be thought of as an actor, Mr. Olympia or as a California governor. Taxonomy creates a one-to-many relationship with any content about Schwarzenegger and auto-generates navigation which can support all of the approaches to accessing any content about him. Site visitors can find the content whichever way that they think about it.
Ektron’s taxonomy system plays key roles in more than just organizing content. CMS400.NET’s URL Aliasing is able to auto-generate human readable and SEO-friendly addresses based on the taxonomic structure of the page. Because it is using the various ways that people relate to the content to determine the alias, search engines will find it based on multiple terms as well.
A taxonomy directory control can automatically create the navigation on your Web site. Once the content is tagged, it automatically shows up in the correct section of the site. The author doesn’t need to know where the content is going to show up, the taxonomy tagging will determine that. If you are managing large amounts of information, this use of taxonomy is especially powerful.
Taxonomy can also improve search functionality, and Ektron’s integrated search takes full advantage of it.
