Organize content: Tags and Categories

In this Article

• When do I use a Tag or a Category?
• Use tags to filter and display posts
• Use categories to narrow down and organize posts

Posts is an extremely flexible tool that allows you to make frequent updates to your content and mix, match, and reuse that content without the need to reconfigure your settings all the time. Posts also makes it easy for users to find exactly the content that’s useful and relevant to them. Using categories and tags gives you additional flexibility to group and filter your posts. 

When do I use a Tag or a Category?

Tags and categories are similar methods of labeling your posts for easier grouping, targeting, and filtering — with two important differences:

• A Tag is used to filter posts in a Post element, but categories are not used in this way. 

• A Category is attached to a single board, while tags can be used across all of your boards and posts.

When you create or update a post, you can assign it to one or more categories, and also assign one or more tags to that post. Together with boards and folders, these labels make it possible to create variable organization schemes for your post content. 

It might be helpful to think of your tags as broad, employing different ways to group posts together that may not take into account the board the post lives on. Categories, on the other hand, further sub-divide what you’ve grouped together in a board, giving you a deep level of organization.

Use tags to filter and display posts

As noted above, tags are universal across all of your boards, and they can be used in a Post element to filter which posts are displayed from your boards and collections. You can also add a Post Tools element in Composer to let users filter the posts on the page by tag.

Add tags to posts

In the post editor screen, expand the “Category & Tags” box to access the tag setting. To add a tag, start typing it into the “Tags” field.

If the tag has already been used on another post, it will autofill and suggestions will appear underneath the field. Click on the suggested tag to add it to the post. 

If the tag is new, you can create it by clicking the green “+ Tag” button next to the field. Tags are case-sensitive, so “enrollment” and “Enrollment” would be considered two different tags. To remove a tag, click the X in the blue box with the tag. 

Manage tags

To view and manage all of your tags, open your Tag Manager utility by clicking Tags in the Posts left navigation menu. 

Tags in the Post element

To configure the content displayed in a Post element to filter by tag, go to the Post element settings and expand the “Content Filters” section.

Select the collection and/or board(s) you would like to display in the element, then select “Specific Tags” below to filter your selection by tags.

Start entering the tag into the “Search Tags” field, then click on the suggested tag when it pops up to add it to the element. If a tag is not in use in Posts, it cannot be selected for the Post element.

Using tags in the Post element is explained in detail in the Level 2 section of Target posts in a Post element.

Tags in the Post Tools element

Finally, you can link a Post Tools element to the Post element on your Composer page to let users filter by tags themselves. 

1. After you have added the Post element to your page, add a Post Tools element. 

2. Open the element settings and select the “Tag Filter” format. 

3. Select the Post element that you want users to filter from the dropdown list.

Best practice: If you have more than one Post element on your page, giving them different names makes it easier to find the one you want in the Post Tools settings, even if you don’t display the name on the page.

Once you link a Post Tools element to a Post element, it is no longer possible to delete the Post element without removing the Tools element. First delete the Post Tools element, then refresh the browser window, to delete the Post element.

Use categories to narrow down and organize posts

Unlike tags, categories cannot be used to filter posts in a Post element. However, they can still be extremely useful for organizing posts in the Posts module, as well as allowing users to see and filter the categories on a particular board. 

Add categories to posts

In the post editor screen, expand the “Category & Tags” box to access the category settings. 

Before you can add a category to a post, you must first add categories to the board. Select the “Manage Categories” button in the post settings, or use the “+ Categories” option in the board’s three-dot action menu to open Manage Categories.

If the board doesn’t have any categories yet, you’ll only see the “Create Category” field. Type in each category name, then click “+ Add Category” to add it to the “Category & Tags” box in the post. Once you have added all your categories, click Save to exit Manage Categories. If you click Cancel instead of Save, all of the categories you created will be removed.

Now that you have categories for your board, click on the applicable category or categories to add it to your post. Click the category again to remove it.

To add, edit, or delete categories on your board, return to Manage Categories. The existing categories will be shown in fields, and you can edit the name or click the trashcan icon to the right of the field to delete them. Then click Save. Again, if you click Cancel instead of Save, your changes will not be applied.

Categories in the Post Tools element

As with tags, you can also link a Post Tools element to the Post element on your Composer page to let users filter by category. 

1. After you have added the Post element to your page, add a Post Tools element. 

2. Open the element settings and select the “Category Filter” format. 

3. Select the Post element that you want users to filter from the dropdown list.

Next steps

Making use of tags and categories gives you many options to build a Posts page that caters to what your users want to see and is easy to keep up-to-date without touching the Composer page. You can even filter by tags in Posts dynamic content to send the latest posts to your Messages subscribers.