Content categories provide a way to group content items independent of content type and folder location. They have two primary uses in Luminate CMS:
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Descriptors - You can use content categories to populate fields such as drop-down menus. For instance, a Website Administrator can add a category-backed field to the Properties step of a content type. An author editing an item of that type selects a category value from the menu. The selected value can also be shown in the published item to help describe it, if the Website Administrator inserts the associated field in the display template.
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Filters - You can use content categories to create dynamic filtered lists of items of a given content type. The items are filtered by the category-backed Descriptors that authors assign to items in that type's Properties step.
Once they are created, content categories can be applied across your website. For example, they can be applied to multiple items of different content types or to items in different folders. Categories are not limited to a single content type, even if they were originally created with a particular content type in mind. An item called Tulip of the content type Flower may share the Color category Red with an item called Sedan, of the content type Vehicle. However, the two items are not actually grouped together in any way. An item located in a single folder can be assigned to multiple categories, while items of different content types can be assigned to the same category.
Content categories enable you to:
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Categorize items using a simple list of options, such as a Color root category with Red, Blue and Green subcategories
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Categorize items using a hierarchy of options, such as: Western Region root category / California subcategory / Bay Area subcategory
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Search and filter items by categories in a simple list
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Search and filter items by root categories. For example, the results of a search for (parent category) California will include items categorized as Bay Area (in the parent category California).
A category is not necessarily visible to your site visitors. For example, a Website Administrator configures the Authoring Wizard Properties step of a Web Page content type with a drop-down menu called Access, where authors categorize each page they create as Public or Private. The categorization is meant for internal use only: the Website Administrator does not include the field in the single display template, so the Access category selected for each Web page does not display on the published page.