Categories & Tags
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Categories & Tags
Section titled “Categories & Tags”Group events so visitors can browse and filter them, and so your calendar reads as an organised programme rather than a flat list.
Eventonomy has two, and they behave differently on purpose:
| Categories | Tags | |
|---|---|---|
| Who creates them | You, in advance | Members, as they go |
| How they are chosen | Picked from your list | Typed freely; a new tag is created the first time it is used |
| Use for | The handful of stable groupings your programme is organised by - Workshops, Talks, Socials | Loose, long-tail detail - beginner, outdoor, family-friendly |
The practical difference: categories are curated, tags are emergent. If you want a fixed set of buckets members must choose from, use categories. If you want to let people describe events in their own words, use tags.
Set Up Categories Before Members Start Submitting
Section titled “Set Up Categories Before Members Start Submitting”This is the step most easily missed. Until at least one category exists, the category picker is hidden in the event editor, so members submitting events have nothing to choose and everything lands uncategorised. Backfilling later is far more work than spending two minutes now.
- Go to Eventonomy → Categories & Tags.
- Under Categories, type a name in New category name (for example
Workshops) and click Add category. - Repeat for the handful of groupings your programme actually uses.
Keep the list short. A category list nobody can hold in their head stops being a filter and becomes a second search box.
Managing the Lists
Section titled “Managing the Lists”The same screen manages both lists. Each row shows the term’s name, its URL slug, and how many events currently use it.
- Add - type a name and click Add. A name that is already in use is refused rather than silently duplicated. For a category you can also pick a Parent category here, and open Colour, icon and image to set its look.
- Search - each list has its own search box, and the lists are paginated, so a long list of tags stays usable.
- Edit - click the term’s name, or Edit on its row. You can change the name (and, for a category, its parent and look). The change applies everywhere the term is used. The slug (and so the filter URL) stays as it was.
- Merge into another - moves every event using this term to the one you pick, then deletes it. The screen suggests possible duplicates, or you can search by name. A tag can merge into a category and the other way round. This cannot be undone.
- Delete - asks you to confirm, then removes the term from every event that used it. The events themselves are untouched; they simply lose that label, and keep any other terms they had. Nothing is lost beyond the grouping.
Tags accumulate naturally as members use them, so this screen is also where you tidy them: merge near-duplicates with Merge into another, and delete one-offs that will never be used again.
Colour, Icon, Image and Parent
Section titled “Colour, Icon, Image and Parent”Categories (not tags) have four extra settings. Set them when you add a category, under Colour, icon and image, or later from the category’s edit screen.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Colour | Tick Custom colour and pick one. It colours the category in the calendar and on its chips and cards. With it off, the category gets an automatic colour from its name, so it is still consistent everywhere. |
| Icon | One of 16 icons (Calendar, Music, Talk, Learning, Business, Tech, Arts, Food and drink, Sports, Community, Books, Photography, Travel, Meetup, Online, Featured), or None. It shows beside the category name on event cards and in the heading of the category’s events page. |
| Header image | An image address, or Choose image from the Media Library. It is shown across the top of the category’s events page. |
| Parent category | Makes this a sub-category, for example Jazz under Music. The list shows it as “in Music”. Filtering by the parent also lists events in its sub-categories. |
The colour dot and icon also show beside the name in the admin list, so you can check the result without opening the front end.
Where They Show Up
Section titled “Where They Show Up”- Event editor - members tick categories from your list and type tags into a comma-separated field.
- Search & Filter block - the categories appear as one-tap chips (“All”, then one per category) that narrow the events shown below.
- Events list - the category is shown on the event card, in its colour and with its icon.
- Event page - every category the event is in appears as a badge near the title (not only the first), and a tag the visitor followed shows as a removable pill above the list.
Deciding Between Them
Section titled “Deciding Between Them”A useful rule: if you would put it in your site navigation, it is a category. Everything else is a tag.
If you are unsure, start with categories only. Tags cost nothing to add later, and an empty tag list is invisible to visitors.