The Körber Foundation's tag system

First of all, users will also find a classic navigation bar at the top of the page on www.koerber-stiftung.de. However, this is usually only used initially to reach main areas such as events, projects or the media library, and most visitors then navigate through the site using #tags, individual terms that are placed under the teasers and posts preceded by a # - and essentially fulfill three functions:

• Thematic categorization of the post
  The user gets an idea of which topic it belongs to by quickly scanning the tags and without reading the teaser.
• Inspirational browsing
  The user's interest is aroused in topics that they had no idea about before their visit.
• Intuitive navigation
  Cross-section, cross-topic and cross-format discovery of content without obsessive attention to the main navigation areas.

Let's talk about ... tags

Keywords. Keywords. Categories. Keywords. Or #tags [tæːx]. For me, the glue that holds the many different formats together thematically. It creates a semantic network in which I can jump from node to node and find exactly what I'm interested in now and next.

A blessing and a curse for the editorial team

Once the article has been written, the question arises as to where it should be placed in the page tree - does it fit better with one topic or another? By assigning tags, it basically doesn't matter where in the tree I place the article, because the user will find it either way if they are interested in the topic. What a blessing.

A curse, on the other hand, is the temptation to assign new tags for each article, because they fit the content and message even more precisely than the existing ones. "A lot helps a lot" is unfortunately the wrong motto when dealing with tags. Because if I only get a few hits when I click on a tag, as a user I simply break off my inspirational trip through the Körber world: "Is that all you have to say on this topic?"

Therefore: Tip

Limit yourself to a few overarching keywords. If I write an article about the Chinese economy and also look at aspects of Chinese-European cooperation and justify behaviors with Chinese culture, then it makes no sense to start the article with

• China expert
• Sino-European cooperation
• Chinese culture
• Chinese economy
• Culture in China
• Chinese Cultural Year
• Chinese economic growth

tag.

In a website with the thematic breadth of a Körber Foundation, the tag should simply be "China". This is the only way I can ensure that when users click on China, they are presented with such an inspiring range of articles that they will be excited and click on further. In comparison, clicking on "Chinese economy" would limit the sheer quantity of related articles to such an extent that the user would probably abandon the site if they were not explicitly interested only in content on the "Chinese economy".

Nasty trap: Alternative spellings

But how is the editor supposed to know which tags have already been created and assigned in the system? And how exactly should they be written? "Chinese politics" or "China politics" or "China policy" - three different tags that mean and say the same thing. Avoid at all costs!

Tags and TYPO3: A question of technology

TYPO3 already comes with a native category system. Körber primarily uses this to assign articles to projects such as "Day of Exile" or "FuturLab Europe". In order not to torpedo this category system, a tag system has been added. However, tags are more than just terms in the Körber world. The editor can optionally upload a descriptive text and a photo for each tag.

Tags 2.0

We use the title, text and photo to automatically generate so-called "tag landing pages", which users are taken to when they click on a tag. Below is an example of the tag "digitization". To assemble this page, we retrieve all News, all events, all books and all media from the database that are tagged with digitization and display this content grouped by format on the page.

Tag target page for the tag "#Digitalization"

Support for the editor

To prevent tags from being created and assigned twice, we help the editor at TYPO3-Backend. Tags are assigned via the page properties. The available tags are displayed on the right-hand side. Click to assign them to the article. To restrict the selection, simply start typing in the filter.

Lessons learned

Tags are an effective means of improving navigation in content-rich websites and providing users with an additional tool for intuitively accessing content according to their interests - and not via a rigid navigation bar.

Advantages at a glance

• Realized for TYPO3 and transferable
  The technical Körber solution is mature and can be transferred to other websites in principle
• Can also be added at a later date
  Implementation at a later date also makes sense and is generally technically feasible. We at sitegeist will be happy to check this for you
• High SEO relevance
  The Google bot is also happy to jump from content to content via tags and crawl the content in a semantic environment.