If you used our previous website platform, Luggage, you might recall most of your content included two sitewide features: Category and Tags.
In Sites and Sites+, these features are no longer available. Here are some of the reasons that we've deprecated these features:
Category
- Website visitors were not frequently using the "content by category" navigation. Low usage of that navigation meant that Category was not providing users significant benefit, and the issue above meant that those who were using it weren't always getting accurate, expected results.
- Choosing appropriate categories for this field often assumed a rigid, static organization for newly developed sites.
- As the site grows and goals change, the available categories require regular updates, or else new content will become misplaced into outdated or inaccurate categories.
- Adding new categories would sometimes mean old content required an audit to be appropriately categorized, increasing the work necessary to maintain the site for all parties.
Tags
- Tags only improve the user experience for visitors who click directly on them to find related content or used the internal site search function to find content that included the relevant tag.
- Analytics showed that very few users clicked directly on tags, and they were an unnecessary distraction for other users who did not have a use for them.
- Our updated search function no longer benefits from tagging content. Including relevant terms directly in the content makes the previous version of tags unnecessary.
Updating these features improves the overall user experience for visitors to your website. If you have any questions about these changes, please email us at websupport@iastate.edu.