What are Terms?

What is a term? A term is a classification within a given taxonomy. Huh, what does that mean? Terms allow us to further group like content by specifying a specific classification, some group.

For example, let’s say that a website is all about music. They write blog posts about music and sell albums and instruments. On their blog, readers will want to filter the content to view and discover articles about their favorite genre, band, or music festival. The built-in WordPress category taxonomy then can have terms such as “genre,” “bands,” and “festivals.” Then within each of these terms authors can break it down further into say “Jazz,” “Rock,” etc.

What’s the point? Why does it exist?

Categories allow us to filter as far down as we want to find more content to read and explore. Imagine a page that highlights all of the content about the Rock genre. That page might be styled differently than the one for Jazz, Rap, R&B, or Classical. We as the developers can give a different visual cue and experience. Then we could group the content by their child terms such as the types of Rock. This extra grouping allows the reader to first find everything about their favorite genre at a more macro level. Then s/he can drill down further and filter the content to view it specifically by “Classic Rock.”

It’s all about improving discoverability to convert readers into staying and paying customers.