What is a Taxonomy?

What is a taxonomy? What is it? Have you ever stopped to think about it? Why does it exist in WordPress? Let’s talk about it. Let’s look at why it exists and what its purpose is within a WordPress CMS website.

Per Wikipedia, a general taxonomy is:

the practice and science of classification of things or concepts, including the principles that underlie such classification

A taxonomy is a way to group like content. It’s the mechanism to classify content.

Okay, why? Why do we need this in WordPress?

The intent of a website is to convert readers into staying and paying clients. It’s to convert a given market segment.

The taxonomy provides the means:

• for the author to specify a classification and;
• for readers to find (or discover) the content they want to read.

WordPress defines a taxonomy as:

A taxonomy is a way to group things together.

For example, let’s take a site that is all about music. Let’s say you like Rock music. You only want to read articles or see products that are geared towards that genre. The taxonomy provides that mechanism for the author to classify the content as Rock and us, as the developer, to build a page that is geared specifically for this genre.

Taxonomies allow us to provide filtering which improves content discoverability for the market segment. It is a much more focused means of presenting targeted content to a reader versus using the search bar.

Pop Quiz

Let’s do a quick pop quiz to see if you truly understand the what, when, and why of a taxonomy.

Why do you need to group things in WordPress? What's the whole purpose of a taxonomy?

A taxonomy makes it easier for readers to find and discover content so that we can convert them into paying and staying customers. It makes discoverability easier and improves the user experience (UX).