Left-side Nav Title Bar - VLab Showcase
Navigation: Category Navigation
What is Category Navigation?
Categories are similar to Tags, but where Tags are ad hoc and used by the entire user base as a single list, Categories are managed by Community Managers and can be organized into collections with a hierarchical structure, also called "vocabularies". In terms of navigation, the effect of using Categories is nearly the same as using Tags - and that is to allow users to find categorized content easily.
What is it good for?
Category Navigation is useful when your community has a good amount of content (such as documents, web content, wiki, blog, etc) that has been categorized by the community's administration and you want an easy way for users to see the content in the categorized way that was intended by the community's administration.
Note that some assets/resources cannot be Categorized, but can be Tagged (such as Forum Threads)
How Do I Use It?
Place a Category Navigation portlet on the left side of a page and an Asset Publisher portlet on the right side of a page, on a page that has at least 2 columns. Configure the Asset Publisher to trigger off of Categories. (See the Asset Publisher section of the User Guide for details.)