Overview
Tag Categories are a critical feature for organizational purposes and for adding filter options to Location Searches, Directory, and Event Searches. The are also highly relevant for Event XML Exports to InDesign.
Placing Tags into Tag Categories will also affect how they are displayed on individual Location and Event Pages themselves.
Tag Categories are groupings of Tags that you create yourself. You can create as many of these as you like, and any Tag can be added to one or more Categories.
By adding Categories to your searches, you allow your readers to filter through Tags to find Locations, Business Listings, or Events that interest them.
Tag Categories are managed within the Tags section of your work site via Tags > Categories while logged on in the Editor role.
When you merge Tags that were assigned to different Categories into one Tag, all those Categories are maintained after the merge.
The following video provides an overview of how Tag Categories work in Metro Publisher:
Tag Categories
For full screen viewing, click the expand icon in the video player.
NOTE: Only Tags that have not been placed in a Category are shown in the Tags area at the bottom of Event content. Any Tags assigned to the Event that are in an Event Category are listed under the Event information heading 'Event Category'. This avoids clickable Tags that would lead to an empty Topics Page, since Events aren't included on those in order to keep Topics Pages current. The same display differences between Tags assigned or not assigned to a Location Tag Category apply to Locations.
NOTE: For a Tag to appear in the column "Event Category" or "Location Category" on the respective overview tables in your admin worksite, the Category that Tag is in must be associated with an Event or Location Search, respectively.
NOTE: For the User-submitted Events form on Metro Publisher sites to function correctly, you MUST connect the Event Categories you wish your users to choose from with an Event Search.
By making this connection, you define a Category as an Event Category, thereby distinguishing it from any other Tag Category in your system and ensuring its display in the User-submitted Events form.
Tag Categories as Search Filters
For the purpose of providing filter options on Searches to your readers, it is important to know that the relationship between Tags of two different Categories is an AND relationship.
This means that you would need to place the Tags 'Brunch' and 'Live Music' in two separate categories for readers to find an Event that offers both brunch AND a live band playing, for example.
Between two Tags of the same Category there is an OR / OR ALSO relationship.
Say you have a Category called Event Type, for example, that includes the Tags 'Concert', 'Film', 'Art Exhibition', 'Guided Tour' etc.
This would mean that your readers could select both 'Film' and 'Concert' from the 'Event Type' Category you created to find all Events that are either a concert, or a film, or both.
Limiting Search Results to a Category
Categories without the checkbox to limit results to that Category selected are shown to the website visitor in the search so that they can further limit their own search.
If the checkbox for the Category is selected, a Location/Event must have a Tag that is within that Category, so your Locations/Events must have at least one Tag from the limiting Category.
In other words, all Locations on your particular search must have at least one Tag from the limiting Category or they will not display.
If a location has Tags of one of the non-limiting categories, the website visitor will be able to use the Tag filter in the public search to narrow down the results.
Also, there is a rule that categories with only one Tag will not be visible in the drop down menu to website visitors because there is no reason to show the Category and Tag if their is no option to click in them to filter.
In some cases, it will therefore make the most sense to put all Tags into one Category and then limit the search to that one Category and not have any others at all.
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