Taxonomies are a way to group types of content together based on their relationships. You may be used to your blog posts having Categories & Tags which is a good way to ensure that related content on your site is fairly easy for your site visitors to find. Categories and Tags are basically taxonomies, and the name of each Category and Tag is known as a Term.
For a more in depth reading about what those are in WordPress, we suggest this article from WordPress:
https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/taxonomies/
You may have noticed we already included "Lesson Type" within the settings for each Lesson (screenshot below).
We also have Course Difficulty and Course Topics when you edit the details of a course.
Well, now you can create your own custom Course Taxonomies in OptimizeMentor, which means you can now categorize your content that you create in the course builder. You can create these for Courses, Modules, as well as Lessons.
To create a custom Course Taxonomy, you'll navigate from your WordPress Dashboard to "Mentor > Settings > Course Taxonomies" and click the "Add Taxonomy" button.
Lets create a taxonomy for Lessons, and give it a name of "Lesson Challenge Levels" and click "Save Course Taxonomy"
Now click the gear icon to open the settings.
This is where you'll add the Terms (you can call these categories if you want - no judgement here). You can see I already added a couple of them. Lets add another.
We'll call this one "Level 3" and choose the same icon as the others, however I'm going to give this icon the color blue. The icon and icon color will be used on the Course Taxonomies element (shown later in this guide), so it is important to choose a color that goes well with your lesson page designs.
Now that we have crated the custom Course Taxonomy, and added the Terms, lets take a look at how to use these on your course pages.
Lets add the Course Taxonomies element to the page by clicking the + Icon and searching for the element.
Once you add the element to your page, you'll see the Course Taxonomy toolbar, and you'll also be able to choose a preset design if you want from the left sidebar that opens after adding the element to the page. You can click the magic wand icon in the toolbar to choose a preset design later if you want.
To use the new taxonomy we created, we'll click the Course Taxonomy icon (3rd icon from the left in the toolbar), and then select the "Lesson Challenge Level" we created above.
After selecting the new Course Taxonomy we created (Lesson Challenge Level) we'll see the Term that goes with the lesson (ie... the Challenge Level) automatically show for the element, along with the icon color we selected.
Now that we have added a custom Course Taxonomy, and added the Course Taxonomy element to our page, lets take a look at how we can style the element (hint: You can change the color of the icon and text here).
The options for this element are similar to the Icon with Text element. The 2nd icon allows you to change the Block Layout, Display media options, and spacing/size settings for the Course Taxonomy element.
The 3rd icon allows you to choose which Taxonomy you want to use with the element, which we already covered in the previous section above.
To change the Course Taxonomy Element's background properties, click the background icon.
To edit the Borders, Shadows, or Shadow Styling, click the borders icon
You can also align the element
Note: Alignment icons on left are wrong. We'll fix this in the next update
As with any elements, you can also (1) reposition, (2) clone, or (3) delete the element
You also can edit the space above/below, max width, and alignment from the settings icon
If you are feeling adventurous you may also explore Advanced Options by clicking the blue "Advanced Options" button from the settings icon as well.
The Advanced Options will then open up the left sidebar for the Course Taxonomy element where you'll be able to edit Positioning, Responsive, Animation/Delay, Other advanced settings, as well as Custom Experiences.
You can also edit some "Hover" options as well such as Transition Duration, Background, Borders/Corners, and Box Shadows.
The Icon part of this element is changed in the Course Taxonomy itself, and not in the element toolbar. This would be done through "Mentor > Settings > Course Taxonomies" and editing the Taxonomy Terms. You'll see the icon option there as well as the default icon color. The color can be changed in the element settings which we'll show you below.
The icon size and background can be changed
The icon color can also be changed by clicking the color icon (2nd icon) in the toolbar. You can see I changed it from gold to orange color
You can also horizontally align the icon, within the icon space (you would have to make that wider to really see this)
You can edit Drop Shadows and the styling for those.
You may also add a link to the icon as well. An idea would be to link it to a pop overlay which could explain (in this example) what Level 1 is.
You can also set a hover color for the icon
The settings icon will let you adjust the space above/below the icon. Useful in certain circumstances.
You can also change several Advanced Options by clicking the "Advanced Options" button.
You'll notice when clicking on the text, that there are not as many options as a Headline Element, however you can still change several options.
You can change the font, font size, and font styling (bold, underline, etc.)
You can also change the text color and background color if you like
You can also change the text alignment
Lastly, you can change the text settings (as well as some advanced options) from the settings icon.
As with any feature, if you should find that you need any help or guidance in understanding how it works, just reach out to us in support and we'll be more than happy to help.
